Natural Instinct?

In most philosophical debates,the word "instincts" is mentioned constantly be it in discussing the theories of human development ( Freud, Erickson,Piaget etc) or why we would save a loved one before someone we don't know or in the case of the life-boat save a stranger over an animal. The word instinct is tossed around to explain why we do the things we do when reason or logic isn't necessary; it is just normal (instinct) to eat meat or want to eat meat? Well so what exactly is this instinct? Is it a genetic code in all animals that make us act they way we do when reason and logic has no say? Or is it a memory imprint we adapted from our ancestors? Well the reason this comes up and why i address it here today is because, recently i was playing a video game (Assassin's Creed) on my PS3 and during one of the dialogues between my character and the operator of the animus ( a device that puts me in an alternate universe sort of like in the matrix trilogy), the operator of this animus asked my character what memory is? My character correctly define it as " a mental recollection of past events" and i was impresses ( because i probably wouldn't have defined it as that) but the operator then said something which broke my train of thought regarding the definition of memory. He said well "memory isn't only the recollection of past events experienced (via our senses) by the individual having the memory but also a recollection of event experienced by the individual's ancestors".So to my understanding, he meant that some how our ancestors or previous relatives pass on their experiences and we can sometimes experience them as our memory; so it got me thinking! What if he is right? What if we can somehow pass down our experiences to future generations who can have a mental recollection of them? What if that is exactly what instincts are? Hear me out before you think I'm crazy! Maybe the reason we act out instinctively is not because we a genetically programmed as animals to act that way but because that is the way it has been done in the past and we've acquired that knowledge and now call it instinct because we can trace it to any theological school of thought?