I feel like I have to jump in a little bit here.

Instincts and drives and behaviors and habits are all different things.

Humans have no instincts. All we have are drives. Drives to reproduce, drives to eat, drives to clean ourselves, drives to survive. None of those are instincts. That is the first thing taught in most psychology classes.

Since I'm bad at describing things, I got this from dictionary.com (I have no psych books in front of me at the moment)
An instinct is a propensity prior to experience, and independent of instructions and Specif., the natural, unreasoning, impulse by which an animal is guided to the performance of any action, without of improvement in the method

I think that is a perfect description of instinct.

Behavior and habit resemble instincts, but is still different because it can be modified and changed from experiences, and I believe can be modified on a micro basis for generations or on a single basis.

Everything your describing to me socali is micro evolution and modifying behaviors in this animal for a satisfactory reaction to certain stimuli. (i.e. Tap on head with hook to notify snake we are not feeding)

We can modify their behaviors, but I don't believe that we are at all changing their instincts.

Like I said, that is what little I remember from psych. I think you are describing something closely in great detail to behavior modification, but giving it the wrong label of evolution and breeding out instincts. If that makes sense.

Ok, carry on.