Kin Selection & Altruism

Hi, Mr Jack. Because of recent discussions of altruism in chimps and monkeys, I've also been giving this some thought. I think your point is well taken.It has also occurred to me that, as is the case in other behaviors, we need to look at the environment in which any "altruistic genes" were selected for: e.g., we eat badly now (too much fat and too much bingeing) because it once made sense in a world of uncertain and intermittent food supply.If altruistic traits evolved in clan/tribal living arrangements, those traits evolved in a context where everyone was related--in which case there would not necessarily be any selection for a finer discrimination: anyone would by definition genetically qualify to benefit from an altruistic act.People risk their own lives to save strangers. You and I have looked at this from different angles but arrive at the same point:Do not ask for whom the altruistic gene was selected--it was selected for thee.

But we would not expect the altruistic gene(s) absolutely to determine behavior--nor do we see universal altruistic behavior.Instead, we see a range of behaviors/predispositions: strikingly altruistic behavior, moderately altruistic behavior, and strikingly nonaltruistic behavior.You know, like Socialists, Democrats, and Republicans If we start with a mutation that merely makes altruism possible, then we would expect there to be other factors in play: familial bonds, or social bonds that promote empathy, would be good candidates.If we simplify to a single gene, we might have a recessive (Aa) that makes altruism possible in the presence of potentiating social factors, an (aa) that makes it almost inevitable, and an AA that makes it exceedingly unlikely. The fitness of each of these might well vary in different scenarios: an AA might be more fit in a catastrophic environment where every-monkey-for-himself is more successful. Thus, I would't expect an invariant altruism characteristic to fix in the population.Nor would I expect such complex behavior to hinge on a single gene, so the calculus is probably way more complex.Sorry this is a bit disjointed: I'm typing as I think...

The mutant's children would still benefit from the altruism of others unless/until they betray their selfishness. Given our powers of deception, this might never happen; on the other hand, as Chiroptera as suggested, we would expect altruism participants to improve over time at detecting the Repub...ooops, selfish mutants.Still, back in the real world, we encounter daily stories of people dying in an attempt to save the lives of perfect strangers, strangers whose altruistic status the altruist cannot know. This is the case that most interests me for it seems to elude any kin selection altriusm or altruism-with-recognition analysis. This scenario led me to consider the emergence of altruism in a social environment where kinship is a given.Perhaps we are looking at two different kinds of altruism: one where the context can be known and considered, and one that is activated as directly as is the case of a sudden, urgent threat to oneself. IIRC, some threat responses occur prior to conscious apprehension, and some do not. Perhaps there are similar flavors of altruism...

Thanks, Chiroptera. RAZD recently made me aware of that work, and I'm still digesting it.In the meantime, I seem to have thought myself into knots. I'll tug here and there and see what comes loose...

This is especially interesting because you are considering the behavior of individuals who have already benefitted from the behavior but do not benefit in an obvious way from their own instance of it. Crows also stay with the parent pair for a few years and help to support subsequent nestings.It strikes me that this is the behavioral equivalent of Irreducible Complexity. There is no intuitive path to the genesis of prepaid behavior, but mathematical analsysis can find one and pop that little balloon of incredulity. Fascinating. It also strikes me that it is good to remember that behavior is culturally mediated: we sometimes think of culture as ethnic flavor, but of course it is more fundamental than that.Kin selection has always troubled me because altruistic behavior ranges from cost-free giving to life-sacrificing rescue attempt--while the degree of relatedness attenuates, the degree of altruism does not: perfect strangers risk their lives to save perfect strangers, and they do it often. If genes voiced altruism, culture may have amplified it by enlarging the scope of "us", the borders of "like me": perhaps the primordial behavior is rooted in the genes, but forms its habitus within the present We. Our mutual recognition may have grown from my family to my tribe, from my clan to my nation, from my nation to my kind: it's enough to make an old leftie go Mau Mau a liberal. Great comments and links, RAZD--much to think about. As usual, thanks again.

Close to where I've tentatively arrived: At present I am speculating that the altruism is selected, and the threshold is socialized.BTW, I believe that gorilla was Koko's niece?When we enter the realm of maternal behavior, all other bets are off. It is difficult to map a behavior within that set to general questions of altruism.

The stimuli of neoteny are powerful: that a protective instinct is triggered in one adult female primate by the distressed young of another seems unsurprising. Periodically, we hear of much more distant species interacting as offspring and parent: there was a recent case of a big predator African cat adopting/protecting a young (?springbok/gazelle).While I believe that animals (mammals and birds in particular) have a much greater degree of consciousness and intelligence than is commonly supposed, we don't have to invoke that stance to explain these maternal behaviors.

That makes sense to me, though I'd love to see the studies.I would not have expected the nesting-helpers' behavior to be purely altruistic. I'm not sure I believe there is such a thing except in the possible case of the Heroic Stranger.Still, I would especially like to know if the activity is selfish (reproductively profitable) counting only the possible parenting and territorial factors. Or is the reproductive balance sheet favorable only if we include the benefit nestlings receive from the prior brood and the social and territorial benefit they receive in the nest-helper role. Crows in the wild do not live to anything near their capacity (just as we didn't, and probably don't yet), and one or two lost breeding seasons is a big hit to take. I have also wondered if there are any "sneaky nesters" in this scenario; do helpers brood the eggs, too? Could they sneak in an egg? I haven't been able to find a good catalog of their helping behaviors.Relating to the "Heroic Stranger": I would have an equal lack of surprise to find the Heroic Stranger only among H. sapiens, though I doubt we were the first hominids to display that behavior. I don't generally expect to find identities between other animals and us, but I do expect to find similarities, any "uniqueness" being a matter of degree.That we see apes, monkeys, and some other species engage in apparent altruism, behavior whose eventual reproductive gain we can trace (sometimes with difficulty) but may see the Heroic Stranger only in H. sapiens, could mean many things: 1) there is a subtle fitness gain we have not discerned (the Hero's young prosper); 2) the behavior is rooted in an apparent altruism of the sort we share with other species which has been superstimulated by culture (Hail the Hero); 3) altruism is a variable trait, like sickle cell, that is reproductively disadvantageous only in severe cases (the Idiotic Stranger); 4) the behavior is actually a threat/predator-mobbing response (it is so often an adult attempting to rescue child(ren), all the above, none...Hell, I dunno. I am skeptical of true altruism--fitness benefit to another at immediate cost to self and without a later recouping. But the Heroic Stranger, for me at least, remains a tough nut to crack. We might find that would-be rescuers have a pretty good success rate, and the rewards of success are fitness; perhaps rescuers have a dismal success rate, and it's really all about H. sapiens' poor risk assessment skills.

Hi, Cal: I agree. I thought about it as follows from earlier in this thread. I don't think any analysis of "altruism" can be complete without considering this original context.This message has been edited by Omnivorous, 11-14-2005 09:13 AM

Thanks, Flies: all your points were interesting and helpful; your remarks on the corvids are persuasive. I do understand about the long-ago encountered studies: I probably have references to them in my book shelf of corvid studies, but, as you say,..yikes! That's a lot of pages Please understand that I am fully in the land of speculation with what follows. No claims.It is indeed the "classic definition of an altruist" that you refer to that fascinates me. Most other flavors are more properly called, as you have suggested, mutualism, commensalism, etc. The neo-Darwinian analyses of these are interesting enough on their own, but ultimately there seems to be no great mystery.I recall studying the notion of a "supernormal" stimulus years ago in the context of wasps and orchids, specifically in an instance where the representation of a female wasp had been so refined by the orchid that the male wasp did not simply land upon the flower, but slammed into it at high speed; thus, a normal behavior driven to its extreme by a supernormal stimulus). The flower, IIRC, was hinged and flipped the wasp where the orchid "wished" it to be, in the pollen. The orchid, in fact, had co-evolved with the wasp to not only elicit the supernormal response, but to depend on it.I don't intend to make a close analogy, but perhaps the scenarios that provoke instances of classic altruism share some common ground: in your jet crash case, the sheer number of those needing assistance might be a supernormal stimulus to a mutualistic or commensalistic behavior; a drowning child might have the same effect on someone whose parental instincts are already in play. I connect this to my earlier speculations about cultural mediation of behaviors evolved in radically different social/familial environments: what we once would do only for family may be generalized by enculturation, or not require any generalization at all, since those behaviors evolved in small clan groups. I have also wondered if classic altruism might not be largely culturally-determined behavior, and the Heroic Stranger merely an individual more susceptible to enculturation (whether via "no great love" religiosity or the secular mythology of the Heroic Stranger).Two quick anecdotes:
1.
Many years ago I was in a biker bar (don't ask). A young beat cop walked in with an outstanding warrant; he shoulda known better. The crowd inside circled slowly around him until no exit was clear; he looked about warily, then said, "Well, it looks like I'm all alone here." Suddenly, one of the bikers jumped into the circle and said, "Naw, man, you're not alone--I'll watch your back!" Needless to say, the cop didn't esp. want or trust his help (though in the general chaos that ensued, the cop saw the better part of valor and simply left); the other bikers were so outraged at the "altruistic" biker's behavior that he, too, had to flee and go into hiding. I talked to him later, and he said, "Man, I don't know why the hell I did that...I guess I just wasn't thinking."2.
Many other years ago, I drove an ice cream truck, the classic Mr. Softee step-van with two side doors and an engine cowl in the driver's compartment. To make a long story short, the truck exploded from a build-up of gas fumes, and the engine sprayed gasoline from a ruptured fuel line. I was lucky enough to be blown out of the truck through the driver's side door and rolled to extinguish the flames. The 12-year-old kid helping me was blown into the passenger side step-well, where he huddled and burned; the passenger side door was chained against thieves. I could hear him screaming, and I jumped back into the truck to pull him out. I didn't think, "Gee, if I go back in there, I might get burned up, but I have to because it's the decent thing to do!" or "Christ wants me to do this!" or "Hey, I could be a hero!" I didn't think at all--in fact, effective action precluded time for thought--I just acted.Like the biker case above, the kid didn't belong to my tribe. He was from another family, another race, another neighborhood--I never saw him again after a few brief commiserations in our respective hospital rooms. What interests me about these anecdotes is two-fold: the difficulty of explaining the behavior in terms of natural selection, and the nearly-reflexive nature of the act...not from ideals, love of kin or friend, not from religion, social pressure, or thoughts of possible reward...not from thought at all.Thanks again for your thoughtful replies.