Some prey grow up together, swarm together, school together, herd together, flock together. There’s safety in numbers. The strongest can be brought in to intimidate or defend against a large predator. The attacker can be mobbed by the entire group of prey. Lookouts can be posted. Danger calls can be agreed upon and coordinated, escape strategies chosen. If the prey are quick, they can dart before the predator, outrace and confuse it, or draw it away from especially vulnerable members of the group. But there is also a selective advantage for cooperation among the predators—for example, one group flushing prey toward another that lies in ambush. For prey and predator alike, community life may be more rewarding than solitude.
To play the escalating evolutionary game of predator and prey, complex behavioral repertoires are eventually needed. Each must detect the other at a distance, and a high premium is established on supplanting local senses such as touch and taste by more long-range senses such as smell, sight, hearing and echo-location. A talent for remembering the past develops in the heads of small animals. Some simple cases of contingency planning, imagining what your response might be to a variety of circumstances (“I’ll do Z if it does A; I’ll do Y if it does B”) may already have been in the genes; but expanding that talent into more complex branched contingency trees, new logic for future needs, greatly aids survival. Indeed, to find and eat anyone—even organisms that take no evasive action—requires, especially when the supply is sparse, a predator to know a great deal.
Basing all your behavior on a pre-programmed set of instructions written in the ACGT language places no undue demands—as long as the environment is the one you were evolved for. But no pre-programmed set of instructions, no matter how elaborate, no matter how successful in the past, can guarantee continuing survival in the face of rapid environmental change. Evolution through natural selection involves only the most remote, generalized, almost metaphorical kind of learning from experience. Something else is needed. When you hunt food; when mobility is high and organisms can roam among very different environments; when social relations with your own kind as well as predator/prey interactions become intricate; when you’re required to process enormous amounts of information about the external world—at such times, especially, it pays to have a brain. With a brain you can remember past experiences and relate them to your present predicament. You can recognize the bully who picks on you and the weakling you can pick on, the warm burrow or protected rock crevice to which you have safely fled before. Opportunistic scenarios for gathering food, or hunting, or escaping may occur to you at a critical moment. Neural circuitry develops for data processing, pattern recognition, and contingency planning. There are premonitions of forethought.
The style of evolution of brains—and much else—is not usually a matter of steady progression. Instead, the fossil record speaks of short periods of rapid and radical evolution, punctuating immense periods of time in which the sizes of brains hardly change at all. This seems true from the evolution of the earliest mammals to the evolution of our own species.9 It’s as if there’s a rare concatenation of events—perhaps changes in the DNA sequence and the external environment together—that provides an adaptive opportunity. The new environmental niches are quickly filled, and for a long time subsequent evolution is devoted to consolidating the gains. Major advances in neural architecture—in the brain’s ability to process data, to combine information from different senses, to improve its model of the nature of the outside world, and to think things through—may be very expensive. For many animals these are such broad-gauge talents, requiring so many separate evolutionary steps, that the major benefits may come only in the far future, while evolution is transfixed by the here-and-now. Nevertheless, even tiny advances in thinking are adaptive. Spurts in brain size have happened sufficiently often in the history of life for us to conclude, from this fact alone, that brains are useful to have around.
Feeling, in mammals at least, is mainly controlled by lower, more ancient parts of the brain, and thinking by the higher, more recently evolved outer layers.10 A rudimentary ability to think was superimposed on the pre-existing, genetically programmed behavioral repertoires—each of which probably corresponded to some interior state, perceived as an emotion. So when unexpectedly it is confronted with a predator, before anything like a thought wells up, the potential prey experiences an internal state that alerts it to its danger. That anxious, even panicky state comprises a familiar complex of sensations, including, for humans, sweaty palms, increased heartbeat and muscle tension, shortened breath, hairs standing on end, a queasiness in the belly, an urgent need to urinate and defecate, and a strong impulse either for combat or retreat.* Since in many mammals fear is produced by the same adrenaline-like molecule, it may feel pretty much the same in all of them. That’s at least a reasonable first guess. The more adrenaline in the bloodstream, up to a certain limit, the more fear the animal feels. It’s a telling fact that you can artificially be made to feel this precise set of sensations just by being injected with some adrenaline—as sometimes happens at the dentist’s (to shorten the clotting time of your blood, another useful adaptation when you’re confronting a predator. Of course you may also be generating some of your own adrenaline at the dentist’s.) Fear has to have an emotion tone about it. It has to be unpleasant.
If the predator’s eye/retina/brain combination is geared especially to detect motion, the prey often have, in their repertoire of defenses, the tactic of standing frozen, stock-still, for long periods of time. It’s not that squirrels, say, or deer understand the physiology of their enemies’ visual systems; but a beautiful resonance between the strategies of predator and prey has been established by natural selection. The prey animal may run; play dead; exaggerate its size; erect its hairs and shout; produce foul-smelling or acrid excretions; threaten to counterattack; or try a variety of other, useful survival strategies—all without conscious thought. Only then may it notice an escape route or otherwise bring into play whatever mental agility it possesses. There are two nearly simultaneous responses: one, the ancient, all-purpose, tried-and-true, but limited and unsubtle hereditary repertoire; and the other, the brand-new, generally untried intellectual apparatus—which can, however, devise wholly unprecedented solutions to urgent current problems. But large brains are new. When “the heart” counsels one action and “the head” another, most organisms opt for heart. The ones with the biggest brains more often opt for head. In either case, there are no guarantees.
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Obliged to accommodate to every twist and turn in the environment they depend upon, living things evolve to keep up. By painstaking, small steps, through the passage of immense vistas of geological time, via the deaths of innumerable slightly maladapted organisms, uncomplaining and unlamented, life—in its interior chemistry, external form, and menu of available behavior—became increasingly complex and capable. These changes, of course, are reflected in (indeed, caused by) a corresponding elaboration and sophistication of the messages written in the ACGT code, down there at the level of the gene. When some splendid new invention comes along—bony cartilage as body armor, say, or the ability to breathe oxygen—the genetic messages responsible proliferate across the biological landscape as the generations pass. At first no one has these particular sequences of genetic instructions. Later, large numbers of beings all over the Earth live by them.
It’s not hard to imagine that what’s really going on is an evolution of genetic instructions, battles between the genetic instructions of competing organisms, genetic instructions calling the shots—with the plants and animals little more, or maybe nothing more, than automata. The genes arrange for their own continuance. As always, the “arranging” is done with no forethought; it’s merely that those beautifully coordinated genetic instructions that, by chance, give superior orders to the living thing they inhabit make more living things motivated by the same instructions.
Think again of the changes in our behavior caused by the incursion of a rabies or an influ
enza virus (made of nucleic acids wearing a coat of protein). Surely much more profound control over us is exercised by our own nucleic acids. When you strip away the fur and feathers, the physiological and behavioral particularities, life is revealed to be the preferential replication of some ACGT messages rather than other, competing messages; a conflict of genetic recipes; a war of words.
In this perspective,11 it’s the genetic instructions that are being selected and that are evolving. Or you might with nearly equal justice say it’s the individual organisms, under the tight control of the genetic instructions, that are being selected and that are evolving. There is no room here for group selection—the natural and attractive idea that species are in competition with one another, and that individual organisms work together to preserve their species as citizens work together to preserve their nation. Acts of apparent altruism are instead attributed chiefly to kin selection. The mother bird slowly flutters from the fox, one wing bent as if broken, in order to lead the predator away from her brood. She may lose her life, but multiple copies of very similar genetic instructions will survive in the DNA of her chicks. A cost-benefit analysis has been made. The genes dictate to the outer world of flesh and blood with wholly selfish motives, and real altruism—self-sacrifice for a non-relative—is deemed a sentimental illusion.12
This, or something quite like it, has become the prevailing wisdom in the field of animal (and plant) behavior. It has considerable explanatory power. At the human level it helps to explain such varied matters as nepotism and the fact that foster children are much more likely (in America, for example, about a hundred times more likely13) to be fatally abused than children living with their natural parents.
The cooperation of the cells in stromatolites and other colonial organisms can be understood as selfish at the level of the gene, since they’re all close relatives. Cooperation of the chloroplast and the cell with which it forms a symbiotic attachment—is this selfish? The cell that eats its chloroplasts is at a competitive disadvantage. It refrains from eating them not because it has even a glimmer of altruistic feeling for the chloroplasts, but because it’s dead without them. It forgoes the pleasures of a chloroplast meal for a substantial future benefit. It exercises restraint on short-term, selfish behavior. It practices impulse control. Selfishness still prevails, but we are made aware of the distinction between short- and long-term selfishness.
For most social animals, and for obvious reasons, the animals you grow up with tend to be close relatives. So if you cooperate, if you show what superficially might seem like altruism, it’s naturally directed toward close kin and can therefore be explained as kin selection. An organism might forego its own replication, for example, and devote its life to improving the chances of the survival and reproduction of close relatives—those with very similar DNA sequences. If all that counts is which sequences will be widely represented in the life of the future, those species with a flair for altruism might do well. They can help ensure that much of their genetic information is passed on, even if none of their atoms wind up in the bodies of the next generation.14
The geneticist R. A. Fisher described heroism as a predisposition inclining its bearer toward “an increased probability of entering an occupation not easily to be reconciled with family life.” Nevertheless, Fisher argued, heroism—in humans or in other animals—might carry a selective advantage by preserving the very similar genetic sequences of close relatives, enabling such sequences to be passed on to future generations. This is one of the first clear articulations of kin selection. Parents sacrificing themselves for a child can be understood on similar grounds. The hero or the devoted parent will be doing simply what feels “right,” without attempting any calculus of benefit versus risk to the gene pool. But the reason it feels “right,” Fisher proposed, is that extended families characterized by conscientious parenting and heroes aplenty will tend to do very well.*
Animals may be willing to make real sacrifices for close relatives, but not for more distant kin. Think of it this way: Imagine sleeping soundly at night, knowing that your children are starving, homeless, or gravely ill. For almost all of us, it would be unthinkable. But forty thousand children die each day of easily preventable hunger, neglect, or disease. Institutions such as the United Nations Children’s Fund are in place that could save these children—with innoculations against illness, with a few cents a day worth of salts and sugar. But the money is unavailable. Other needs are deemed more pressing. The children continue to die while we sleep well. They are far away. They are not ours. Now tell us you don’t believe in the reality of kin selection.
Still, if you find yourself among others of your own species who are not your near kin, surely it is to your advantage to cooperate against a common enemy. You can draw upon behavior evolved for kin selection in order that a group of animals not closely related can cohere and survive.* And if altruism is one of your talents, you might find yourself practicing it even on animals of another species. Dogs are known to risk their lives to save humans—surely no close relatives. Nor does the hope of future reward explain their behavior.
How are we to understand well-attested cases of dolphins saving drowning humans by repeatedly nuzzling them up to the surface and pushing them toward shore? Is the dolphin unable to distinguish the thrashing human from an infant dolphin in trouble? This is highly unlikely; dolphins are discerning observers. What about cases of abandoned or strayed human infants being raised by wolf mothers that have lost their pups, or birds of a different species brooding cuckoo eggs? Why do drivers swerve to avoid hitting a dog on the road, although they thereby put their own children in the back seat at increased risk? What about youngsters dashing back into the burning house to rescue the cat? Such cases of courage and care directed to other species may derive from a misdirected kin selection, but they do happen and they do save lives. Shouldn’t we then expect to find altruistic behavior much more frequently directed toward other members of the same species, even if they’re not close relatives?
Consider two groups, one composed of unrelentingly selfish individualists, the other of solid citizens who are occasionally willing to sacrifice themselves for (even distantly related) others. Against a common enemy, can we not imagine circumstances in which the latter group fares better than the former? Obvious disadvantages also accrue to a community of strict altruists constantly throwing their lives away in order to benefit total strangers. Such a group would not last long—if only because any tendency toward selfishness would quickly spread.
What if there’s a critical size for the group to work? When membership is below some rough threshold, certain functions of the group begin to fail. For example, the bigger the group, the better huddling together for warmth works,15 or mobbing a predator;16 and below a certain size, group benefits become increasingly unavailable. It’s not hard to imagine wholly selfish genes that cause defections from community service—a refusal to mob a predator, say, because it might be dangerous. If these genes proliferate, the point will be reached where almost nobody has the gumption to mob, and the danger posed to everyone by predators has increased. Thus, for longer-term reasons that are selfish at the level of the genetic instructions, short-term altruism may be adaptive, and might be selected for—even if the members of the group are not near relatives. In closely knit communities, individual selection and what looks very much like group selection are both elicited.
Many examples thought to demonstrate group selection have, with an almost maddening ingenuity, been explained at least equally well by a new school of biologists and game theorists. Some explanations seem quite plausible, but not all. For example, when a predator threatens a group of Thomson gazelles, one or two may leap in conspicuous high arcs near the predator. This is called stotting. The group selectionist view is straightforward: The individual calls attention to itself and risks being eaten in order to save the group. (But suppose stotting were never invented; could the predator eat more than one Thomson gazelle anyway? Compared to ot
her species of gazelles ignorant of stotting, are fewer eaten thanks to stotting?) The prevailing individual selectionist view is that the stotter is advertising its own gymnastic abilities and reminding the predator that less athletic gazelles are easier to eat. It stots for crassly selfish reasons.17 (But then why don’t most Thomson gazelles stot when stalked? Why doesn’t such selfishness spread through the herd? Does the predator in fact turn its attention from the stotter to a less conspicuous gazelle?)
Like the classic optical illusions—is it a candelabra, or two faces in profile?—the same data can be understood from two quite different perspectives (although neither may be fully satisfying). Each may have its own validity and utility.18 Individual selection and group selection must ordinarily go together (or, in scientific speech, be highly correlated); otherwise evolution would never occur. We might argue that individual selection must have some primacy, because you can have individuals without a group, but not vice versa. However there are many animals, primates among them, where the individual cannot survive without the group.
Strict selfishness and strict altruism are, it seems to us, the maladaptive ends of a continuum; the optimum intermediate position varies with circumstance, and selection inhibits the extremes. And if it’s too difficult for the genes to figure out on their own what the optimum mix is for each novel circumstance, might it not be advantageous for them to delegate authority? For this again, brains are needed.
Consider kin selection once more. Never mind the nagging question about how well birds, say, can distinguish uncles from cousins; especially in small groups, it doesn’t much matter—everyone’s a pretty close relative, and kin selection works in a statistical sense, even if you occasionally put yourself on the line for some unrelated neighbor. It makes sense, in terms of the preservation of multiple copies of closely related genetic instructions, to accept a 40% chance of dying to save the life of a sibling (who has 50% of the same genes you have); or a 20% chance to save an uncle or a niece or a grandchild (who share 25% of your genes); or a 10% chance of dying to save the life of a first cousin (who has 12.5% of exactly the same genes that you do). Well, then, what about giving up the means of affording another child in order to preserve the families of many second cousins? What about donating ten percent of your income so a gaggle of third cousins have enough to eat? Might it pay to abstain from a few luxuries so fourth cousins can be educated? What about writing a letter of recommendation for an undistinguished fifth cousin?