Animals are not machines motivated by the sole instinct of survival. They are living beings capable of experiencing many emotions, including empathy and tenderness, even feeling the need to help others.
Although, taking an evolutionary logic focused on the survival of the fittest, altruistic behaviors would have no place in natural selection, since they imply that the individual who performs them sacrifices something to benefit others, at the expense of his own survival and reproduction.
Given this, many evolutionary scientists wonder if it is true that animals perform truly altruistic behaviors. Is there altruism in animals or is there actually any motivation behind their seemingly selfless actions? We will try to answer this question below.
Altruism consists of benefit other individuals at the expense of our own well-being, that is, it involves helping others while we lose something, to a greater or lesser extent, significant. This quality is usually associated with human beings, however the question has also arisen as to whether it is possible for there to be altruism in animals. In fact, there are more and more people, especially those who live with pets, who claim that in some way Another way, animals have behaved altruistically, doing something beneficial for their owners but putting themselves in danger, such as saving them in a fire.
This topic has been of great interest to the field of zoology and associated branches, since, in principle, altruism in animals clashes with classical evolutionary theses but apparently it seems to be a reality: there are animals that help others without receiving anything in return. change, or so it seems. This is striking since the classical conception of wildlife is limited to two actions: surviving and perpetuating its species. If you help another individual by taking risks, he would be behaving in an “unnatural” way.
Intraspecific altruism
Really, These altruistic behaviors are totally natural and make a lot of evolutionary sense if they occur in the same species, since the modern conception of evolution is not the survival of the fittest, but rather ensuring that genes are passed on to the next generation. Each individual has a specific genome, a set of genes that are largely the same as those of their closest relatives. Thus, individuals can leave copies of their own genes in subsequent generations in two ways: by reproducing themselves and by increasing the reproductive success of their relatives.
That is, we do not need to reproduce to pass our genes on to the next generation. It is true that they would not be exactly our genes, but to a large extent they would be the same. For example, if we have a brother and we sacrifice ourselves for him, ensuring that he can reproduce one day and have a child, to a large extent, it is as if we had reproduced ourselves. This is known as kin selection and is the basis of intraspecific altruistic behaviors.
Another explanation given to altruistic behaviors within the same species is the principle of reciprocity, that is, helping an individual in danger, if he survives, that survivor will help others when they are in trouble Another explanation is that through these behaviors the social structure of the community is reinforced, since a climate of trust, cohesion and protection is generated, making the group more united and thus guaranteeing group survival.
Below we can see a few situations where kin selection is well present since, even if one puts oneself in danger or sacrifices part of one’s resources, the survival of similar conspecifics is ensured.
Communal breastfeeding
In many species of mammals, females are responsible for breastfeeding both their offspring and those of others in the group, that is, they act as wet nurses. This is an exhausting task since these females not only invest energy in raising their own offspring, but also the offspring of other females.
In other cases, what happens is that they do not show preferences and are indifferent to who they care for, so they may well be raising a calf with great genetic similarity to them or one from another mother, this being what would be considered altruistic behavior in the strict sense. One species that has this type of communal suckling is capybaras.
Alarm calls
Prairie dogs rest using different types of calls. In this way they tell them to hide and stay safe, while those who warn manage to attract the attention of the predator, exposing themselves to being hunted. This behavior has also been observed in many other types of mammals, such as meerkats, which have limbs that act as watchdogs that constantly scan the terrain and produce alarm calls when predators are nearby.
Helpers in the nest
In many species of birds, young adults remain with their parents and help care for the next brood, instead of flying the nest and starting their own families. Since their siblings have the same genes as them, they ensure that they grow up healthy at the expense of reproducing themselves. Among the species that we can find this particular form of altruistic behavior we have the European tit (Parus major) and the Florida jay (Aphelocoma coerulescens).
reproductive altruism
In insects where there are workers, such as ants or bees, some individuals sacrifice their fertility and dedicate themselves exclusively to caring for and feeding the queen’s descendants. Since these offspring are her sisters, since in these species all individuals are very closely related, ensuring that the queen’s daughters grow up and survive. It’s another way to pass genes on to the next generation similar to the case of helper birds.
Risky rescue
Extremely risky behavior has been found in cetaceans such as whales and dolphins and also in elephants to rescue a member of the group that is in trouble. For example, in the case of dolphins If they find someone who is badly injured and cannot swim well, they take him to the surface so he can breathe
In the case of elephants, when a young one gets stuck in a mud puddle, the others help it out, hitting it with their head or trunk, even though they themselves could fall into the mud and become trapped.
Altruism between species?
Seeing the examples of intraspecific altruism we understand why they occur. Even if the individual itself does not reproduce or even ends up losing its life, ensuring that its relatives survive is one more way to pass its genes on to the next generation. With the theory of kin selection, the scientific community has been able to respond to the survival of maladaptive genes, since those who carry them survive thanks to the help of relatives who sacrifice themselves for them.
Now, what about interspecies altruism? There are many cases in which it has been observed that an animal has helped another of another species or has even helped animals that in principle could prey on it. Are they pure altruistic behaviors? Are they helping other animals because they want to? Is there any mutual benefit in what appears to be selfless behavior?
That two organisms of different species help each other cannot be explained with the theory of kin selection since there is none. They do not share the same genes, not even if they are phylogenetically close species What’s the point of helping a member of another species reproduce? Below we will see some apparently cases of interspecific altruism and what explanations could make sense of them.
Reciprocity and cooperation
An interesting case of cooperative behavior was observed in Ethiopia recently. Two potential rivals, the gelada baboons (Theropithecus gelada) and the wolves of Semien (Canis simensis) seemed to collaborate with each other and they even hit it off, showing a situation that surely resembled the first scenes of the dog’s domestication process by the most primitive humans. These wolves do not attack the young of the primates which, in turn, allow the canids to be close to their flock and feed on mice that are attracted to the activity of the monkeys.
This is not altruistic behavior, since there are not some who lose something and the others gain They simply cooperate but in a very curious way, since the wolves could feed a lot and quickly by attacking the baby baboons, animals that are much more nutritious than small mice. The main advantage they get from this agreement is that since mice are easier to hunt and there are more of them, using bait monkeys they invest less energy obtaining more food in the long term.
Another case of interspecific cooperation is found in birds of the Indicatoridae genus, commonly called “honey indicators.” These accompany badgers and humans to wild bee nests, helping them find honey easily. The bird risks being stung, although it is already used to it and knows how to avoid it, while it benefits from the presence of other animals feeding on its remains.
Interspecific adoption
The most striking interspecific altruistic behavior is the adoption of animals from other species It is normal that within a pack, when a puppy loses its mother, another adult female is in charge of taking care of it, making a lot of sense in the intraspecific case because this guarantees the survival of an individual very similar to its new mother, who was surely related to the biological mother. However, this logic is not applicable in the case of interspecific adoption.
In these cases, especially among mammalian species, the fact that an adult female adopts a offspring of another species can be explained by epimeletic motivation, a kind of instinct that some species (including humans) have to respond with paternal behaviors when recognizing signs. childish such as watery eyes, round face, small ears, poorly formed hands…
It is not very difficult to understand this idea. Let’s think about a puppy that is very few weeks old. Who doesn’t have the need to hug and protect him? He is not a human baby, but he makes us want to take care of him. Well, this same thing happens to adult dogs, cats, gorillas, lions, tigers… There are many real cases of animals of these species that have adopted puppies from others, even nursing them There have even been cases of animals adopting cubs from their predators.
Adopting offspring from a different species does not provide any benefit in terms of biological efficiency and some biologists have hypothesized that this It could be due to an error in the recognition of offspring or to the hormonal levels present in mammals when a mother has lost her offspring needing to take care of a puppy and accepting the first one he finds.
Help and protection
But in addition to interspecies adoption, there are cases of interspecific altruistic behaviors that are truly striking, some of them benefiting individuals of our species. There are many cases of dolphins and other cetaceans that have saved humans who were about to drown by bringing them to the surface even though, technically speaking, we are one of their predators.
In 2009, a case was documented in Antarctica in which a seal fleeing from a group of orcas was saved by two humpback whales that were passing by, getting in the way. These whales feed on fish and crustaceans, so the reason for saving the seal was not to eat it later. They really wanted to save his life, or at least that was concluded in the face of such an interesting event.
Animals have feelings
Having seen everything explained, what we must be clear about is that Many animals have complex feelings and, in one way or another, can perform behaviors that can be considered altruistic acts Human beings are not the only animals with empathy and there are many animals that are capable of caring about the selfless survival of others, both of their own species and of others.
Naturally, The empathy that human beings can feel and that of animals must be different Although we cannot verify the intensity of this feeling in other animal species, it is not likely that it is “the same” as ours, since whether we like it or not, they continue to live in nature and guarantee their own survival or, at least, the of his relatives is above helping anyone else.
Be that as it may, there is altruism in animals because they feel. Whether helping a badly injured animal, preventing another from being hunted by putting themselves in the way, or adopting a baby of another species, animals can often behave in a selfless manner. They will not do it by instinct, nor will it be the common rule, but they certainly show their ability to feel empathy on more than one occasion by helping those who need it most.
