Nonhuman animals ethics
Nonhuman animals ethics account for an explanation of the origins of human ethics. Because we have no historical record of a human society before it had any standard of right and wrong, it makes it difficult to explain the origins of morality. Knowing that human beings are social animals, the origins of morality can be explained by the social behaviour of nonhumans animals through the evolutionnary theory that explains such a behaviour.
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Altruism : Kinship and reciprocity
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Research in evolutionary theory has been applied to social behaviour. Some of this altruistic behaviour is explained by kin selection. One example is parental sacrifices such as matriphagy in the spider Stegodyphus. Hamilton's rule describes the benefit of such altruism in terms of Wright's coefficient of relationship to the beneficiary and the benefit granted to the beneficiary minus the cost to the sacrificer. Should this sum be greater than zero a fitness gain will result from the sacrifice.
When apparent altruism is not between kin, it may be based on reciprocity. A monkey will present its back to another monkey, who will pick out parasites; after a time the roles will be reversed. Such reciprocity will pay off, in evolutionary terms, as long as the costs of helping are less than the benefits of being helped and as long as animals will not gain in the long run by “cheating” - that is to say, by receiving favours without returning them.
Examples of nonhuman animals ethics
- Dolphins support sick or injured animals, swimming under them for hours at a time and pushing them to the surface so they can breathe,
- Wolves and wild dogs bring meat back to members of the pack not present at the kill,
- Male baboons threaten predators and cover the rear as the troop retreats,
- Gibbons and chimpanzees with food will, in response to a gesture, share their food with others of the group.
- Vampire bats regularly regurgitate blood and donate it to other members of their group who have failed to feed that night, ensuring they do not starve,
- In numerous bird species, a breeding pair receives help in raising its young from other “helper” birds, who protect the nest from predators and help to feed the fledglings,
- Vervet monkeys give alarm calls to warn fellow monkeys of the presence of predators, even though in doing so they attract attention to themselves, increasing their personal chance of being attacked.
- In social insect colonies (ants, wasps, bees and termites), sterile workers devote their whole lives to caring for the queen, constructing and protecting the nest, foraging for food, and tending the larvae. Such behaviour is maximally altruistic: sterile workers obviously do not leave any offspring of their own (so have personal fitness of zero) but their actions greatly assist the reproductive efforts of the queen.
Related topics
- Ethics
- Sociobiology
- Evolutionary game theory
- Altruism
- The Descent of Man
- Natural selection
- Evolutionarily stable strategy