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A lot of what animals do to survive is instinct, which is essentially a preprogrammed response to certain stimuli. There's no thought involved in it, which is hard for humans to understand because almost all of our behaviors are learned. These instinctive behaviors are, as Ch'i said, shaped by natural selection.
As for the mimic octopus, some of those behaviors are instinctive (for example turning black as a threat, which is widespread among the octopods), but I wouldn't be surprised if some of them were learned. Laboratory tests have shown that many species of cephalopod are very intelligent.
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And you believe Bush and the liberals and divorced parents and gays and blacks and the Christian right and fossil fuels and Xbox are all to blame, meanwhile you yourselves create an ad where your kid hits you in the head with a baseball and you don't understand the message that the problem is you.
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