THERE was no doubt that the humpback whale saved the seal’s life, carrying it away on its chest and protecting it with its flipper from the onslaught of the killer whales. It was odd behaviour that marine ecologist Robert Pitman observed in the frigid Antarctic seas back in 2009 – but, it turned out, not uncommon. How you interpret it goes to the heart of an intense evolutionary debate: can any creature ever be truly altruistic?
A basic reading of evolution says no, because survival of the fittest means maximising your own reproductive success. Altruism, defined by philosopher Auguste Comte in 1851 as “intentional action, ultimately for the welfare of others, that entails at least the possibility of either no benefit or a loss to the actor”, is simply not a thing.
Advertisement
Things that look like it are widespread. Many animals act in ways that reduce their own reproductive success but benefit others. Some social insects, for example, give up reproduction entirely to support the colony.
One proposed explanation is kin selection: altruism persists because it helps the close relatives of nicer individuals to reproduce, which passes their own genes on too. Some form of this was probably at play with the humpback whale: by automatically chasing away orcas, regardless of what they were attacking, the humpback increased the survival chances of individuals in its pod.
at Binghamton University in New York champions a different idea: group selection. This emphasises the reproductive success not of individuals, but of a whole group. “All you have to do is go up a little bit in scale, and there you have your evolutionary advantage,” he says.
Wilson and his colleagues have done experiments with groups of insects called pond skaters that he says back up this idea. Male pond skaters are either aggressive sexual predators that hound females with such ferocity that they can barely feed, or so docile they hardly bother trying to father offspring. The team showed that, although docile males fathered fewer offspring, groups that contained a higher proportion of such males were more productive overall, largely because the females were allowed a bit of space.
The debate has often been fierce, but Ashleigh Griffin at the University of Oxford says there is now broad agreement that kin selection and group selection are basically saying the same thing using different language. Both explain away altruism: being nice always comes with some form of payback.
How about the human animal? It might seem that our species has a unique capacity for doing good. We have theory of mind – the ability to understand others’ points of view, including their pain (see “Who do you think you are? Why your sense of self is an illusion”) – and we have sophisticated systems of ethics and religious beliefs. All this drives some to make extreme sacrifices for others. Yet boil it all down, and it is hard to show that we aren’t doing things because we expect a quid pro quo. “I think altruism can exist, for example in humans. It’s just very difficult to prove,” says Griffin.
Of course, such questions of motivation matter less than outcomes. So if you are driven by a desire to do good, don’t stop – whether it is helping the homeless or, indeed, saving the whales.
Cutting-edge science throws up all sorts of controversial, nebulous and mind-bending concepts. Here’s your guide to how to think about some of the fiddliest of them:
- In the quantum world, uncertainty reigns – or is it all in the mind?
- Think you understand how evolution works? You’re probably wrong
- Why information could be our route to the universe’s deepest secrets
- Who do you think you are? Why your sense of self is an illusion
- Homo sapiens? Genetic insights suggest we may not really be a species
- Big bang retold: The weird twists in the story of the universe’s birth
- Firms and governments use the internet to spy on us. Should we care?
- D’oh! Why human beings aren’t as intelligent as we think
- Extinction is a fact of life. Could we stop it – or even reverse it?
- Alien life could be weirder than our Earthling brains can ever imagine
- Why it’s time to call time on the ‘nature vs nurture’ debate
- Dark energy: Understanding the mystery force that rules the universe
