While this was an extreme example of heroism, such self-sacrificing behavior is common enough in our species to raise a challenge to the TOE.
Hardly. Evolution works on populations. Whether altruism exists in humans or not, I find it very probable to conceive of a scenario in which a population of altruists survive better than an otherwise-equal population of non-altruists.
Perhaps this behavior is evidence for group selection, but most evolutionary biologists seem to believe that group selection plays little, if any role, in evolution.
Huh?
Jon
"Can we say the chair on the cat, for example? Or the basket in the person? No, we can't..." - Harriet J. Ottenheimer
"Dim bulbs save on energy..." - jar
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