For a baby to grow up without developing an ego, if that is possible, all of it's needs for warmth, being held, loved, fed, rocked, and a million other needs/wants would need to be filled almost before it felt them. That would be called being spoiled.
Yeah, and unfortunately often that is just a very immature ego. Animals have survival instincts, but that in itself doesn't mean they have this egoic consciousness. It is when that natural instinct hooks up with the psychological mind in a human being that you have the strange phenomena of self image and trying to preserve such, as if your actual survival depended on it - reminds me of the parts of Zoolander I saw last night. Of course, it should be pointed out that this doesn't necessarily have anything to do with IQ. One might be gifted but it would be a waste if that intelligence is in the service of a totally self absorbed ego, be that your own or someone else's. (in the latter case it would just be one ego modeled after another) In this regard I think one would do well to take the attitude of the Peter character from the movie Office Space: "You see Bob, its not that I'm lazy - its just that I don't care."