Well 'conscious' is an interesting thing. I forgot how they officially word but an imitated trait or skill can potentially be passed down epigenetically, such as the fear of a fox, without being encoded in DNA. It's possible the ballooning spides for example, may have just imitated each other and the successful ones left a genetic tag, rather than telling each other consciously.

It's something I need to read up on more, but pretty cool either way!