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Evolutionary biologists and animal behaviorists have sought to identify the mechanisms that can explain what some have called the “problem of altruism.” Natural selection operates against ...

When we attached tiny, backpack-like tracking devices to five Australian magpies for a pilot study, we didn’t expect to discover an entirely new social behaviour rarely seen in birds. Our goal was to ...

Reciprocal altruism occurs where the roles of the donor and recipient are later reversed. This often occurs in social animals. For example, vampire bats feed only on blood. An individual cannot ...

This discovery suggests that the instinct to help may be more widespread in the animal kingdom than previously thought. Altruism, often considered a typically human characteristic, may in fact have ...