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Why are animals nice to each other?

Gadagkar, R (2008) Why are animals nice to each other? [Book Chapter]

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Abstract

It may sound strange, even perhaps ma licious, to lab e l niceness as a mystery. But that's just what it is for evolutionary biologists, who like to label anything that they cannot easily explain through Darwin's theory of natural selection as a mystery. Natural selection, graphically described by Darwin's phrase 'the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life', prepares us to expect competitive selfishness rather than cooperation and altruism. After all, how can an individual that pays a cost in helping another be expected to win the race to survive and reproduce?

Item Type: Book Chapter
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Keywords: Ground squirrels, Natural selection, Predation, Alarm calls, Bee-eaters
Department/Centre: Division of Biological Sciences > Centre for Ecological Sciences
Date Deposited: 22 Mar 2021 10:40
Last Modified: 22 Mar 2021 10:40
URI: http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/68287

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