Behavioural Ecology
In Our Time
00:00
Altruism and Cooperation Within Species
There are instances of cooperation that exist within species. There are cases in birds where there are helpers at the nest and these are adult birds that forgo reproduction themselves to assist parent birds in raising their young so this is seemingly an evolutionary puzzle why are they forsaking their fitness to help others gain fitness? The extreme example of that are the social insects like bees who never ever reproduce but give up their whole lifetime to go out and collect nectar to feed the hive. Can we begin to apply some of these notions to human behavior um john crabs that's something that I've been thinking about a lot over the last few years.
Transcript
Play full episode
