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+--- Thread: Animal altruism: nature isn’t as cruel as the Discovery Channel says (/thread-10630.html)
Animal altruism: nature isn’t as cruel as the Discovery Channel says - C C - Jul 14, 2021
https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/animal-altruism
KEY POINTS: Primates practice altruism all the time and demonstrate a basic morality. These actions appear to be unmotivated by a hidden desire for self-interest. Indeed, altruism is necessary for the survival of social animals.
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VIDEO TRANSCRIPT INTRO: People sometimes describe nature as a dog-eat-dog world. Some of the biologists depict nature as a battlefield basically where selfish tendencies tend to prevail. And from morality, the evolution of morality there's very little room. What they mean is that all they see is competition. I win, you lose, winning is better than losing and so on. That's totally wrong.
I fought against that sort of characterization of animal society all my life, because just like human society it is built on a lot of friendship and cooperation at the same time. We'd like to deny that connection that exists between us and animals.
Certain tendencies, such as a sense of fairness, empathy, caring for others, helping others, following rules, punishing individuals who don't follow the rules, all of these tendencies can be observed in other primates. And they're saying these are the ingredients that we use to build a moral society.
The whole spectrum of both very positive behavior and very negative behavior can be seen in other animals. Animals can be heroic and they can be genuinely altruistic and we actively tested in our chimpanzees.
We've done an experiment where a chimpanzee can choose between two options. One option rewards only himself, the other option rewards himself plus a partner who sits next to him... (MORE - the video)