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Can altruism exist without empathy? Lessons from the ant world
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Christian Science Monitor
Posted: March 12th, 2018
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2018/0220/Can-altruism-exi...
Named for a famed group of Bantu warriors, the Matabele ant is renowned as a fierce fighter. But the sub-Saharan termite-hunter also shows a caring side. Researchers have found that Megaponera analis, as scientists call it, will tend to the wounds of nest-mates. The only other animals that have been observed systematically treating others injuries are humans and some of our primate relatives. In other words, ants and humans share what biologists call a convergent trait: caring for another in need. The finding also informs a growing body of research aimed at fitting what we experience as moral sentiments into a larger pattern in nature. That such precisely directed helping behavior, as it is known, pops up in as distant a relative as the ant belies some popular notions of Darwinian evolution, which characterize natural selection as promoting only selfish behavior. While its true that competition both among and within species plays a major role in shaping the evolution of biological traits, its not natures only driving force. If you bring people together, the first thing they want to do is cooperate, says Dr. de Waal, the author of several books on morality and empathy in nonhuman animals. Now we know from all sorts of studies ... that actually all of the mammals are a bit like that. The first tendency is to help. People, being the intelligent, social mammals that we are, like to frame helping in terms of morality. But ants appear to demonstrate helping behavior without morality, says [biologist] Erik Frank.
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