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ikenbot: Will E.T. Look Like Us? Evolution helps us imagine what aliens might be like Side Note: I love these types of discussions, specifically because of their overall implications. The more we learn about how evolution works and where it works and under what conditions the more we see how life, while not always probable still very possible, can grow on other worlds. Think of how limited our technology still is in terms of what we are able to see and how many habitable planets we can currently detect. Now think how exponentially larger that scope of detection would become if its technology continue to progress. I imagine this would also change our minds about how we think evolution evolves elsewhere, how much more diverse it may be, and how often in occurs in the cosmos once the right conditions for life are set. I recommend reading this whole piece especially if you’re well into astronomy, biology, or astrobiology and the topic of evolution occurring elsewhere in the Universe. Image: Cover art for Carl Sagan’s ‘The Dragons of Eden’ by SciAm’s Michael Shermer What are the odds that intelligent, technically advanced aliens would look anything like the ones in films, with an emaciated torso and limbs, spindly fingers and a bulbous, bald head with large, almond-shaped eyes? What are the odds that they would even be humanoid? In a YouTube video, produced by Josh Timonen of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, I argue that the chances are close to zero (www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKAXrmkx12g). Richard Dawkins himself made this interesting observation in a private communication after viewing it: I would agree with [Shermer] in betting against aliens being bipedal primates, and I think the point is worth making, but I think he greatly overestimates the odds against. [University of Cambridge paleontologist] Simon Conway Morris, whose authority is not to be dismissed, thinks it positively likely that aliens would be, in effect, bipedal primates. [Harvard University biologist] Ed Wilson gave at least some time to the speculation that, if it had not been for the end-Cretaceous catastrophe, dinosaurs might have produced something like the attached [referring to paleontologist Dale A. Russell’s illustrated evolutionary projection of how a bipedal dinosaur might have evolved into a reptilian humanoid]. I replied to Dawkins that if something like a smart, technological, bipedal humanoid has a certain level of inevitability because of how evolution unfolds, then it would have happened more than once here. In his 2001 book Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Robert Wright argues that our existence precludes other terrestrial intelligences of our level from arising. But Neandertals were as close as one can get to a counterfactual experiment: they had hundreds of thousands of years to themselves in Europe without our interference and showed nothing like the technological and cultural progress of the modern humans who displaced them. Dawkins’s rejoinder to me is enlightening: But you are leaping from one extreme to the other. In the film vignette, you implied a quite staggering rarity, so rare that you don’t expect two humanoid life-forms in the entire universe. Now you are … pointing out, correctly, that a certain inevitability would predict that humanoids should have evolved more than once on Earth! So, yes, we can say that humanoids are fairly improbable, but not necessarily all that improbable! Anything approaching “a certain inevitability” would mean millions or even billions of humanoid life-forms in the universe, simply because the number of available planets is so huge. Now, my guess is intermediate between your two extremes … I suspect that humanoids are not so very rare as to justify the statistical superlatives that you permitted yourself in the vignette. Good point. But of the 60 to 80 phyla of animals, only one, the chordates, led to intelligence, and only the vertebrates actually developed it. Of all the vertebrates, only mammals evolved brains big enough for higher intelligence. And of the 24 orders of mammals only one—ours, the primates—has technological intelligence. As the late Harvard evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr concluded: “Nothing demonstrates the improbability of the origin of high intelligence better than the millions of phyletic lineages that failed to achieve it.” In fact, Mayr calculated that even though there have evolved perhaps as many as 50 billion species on Earth, “only one of these achieved the kind of intelligence needed to establish a civilization.” The late astronomer Carl Sagan, in a Planetary Society debate with Mayr (Bioastronomy News, Vol. 7, No. 4, 1995), noted that technologically communicating species “may live on the land or in the sea or air. They may have unimaginable chemistries, shapes, sizes, colors, appendages and opinions. We are not requiring that they follow the particular route that led to the evolution of humans. There may be many different evolutionary pathways, each unlikely, but the sum of the number of pathways to intelligence may nevertheless be quite substantial.” Thus, the probability of intelligent life evolving elsewhere in the cosmos may be very high even while the odds of it being humanoid may be very low. I strongly suspect that we are blinded by Protagoras’ bias (“Man is the measure of all things”) when we project ourselves into the alien Other.
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ikenbot:

Will E.T. Look Like Us?

Evolution helps us imagine what aliens might be like

Side Note: I love these types of discussions, specifically because of their overall implications. The more we learn about how evolution works and where it works and under what conditions the more we see how life, while not always probable still very possible, can grow on other worlds. Think of how limited our technology still is in terms of what we are able to see and how many habitable planets we can currently detect. Now think how exponentially larger that scope of detection would become if its technology continue to progress. I imagine this would also change our minds about how we think evolution evolves elsewhere, how much more diverse it may be, and how often in occurs in the cosmos once the right conditions for life are set. I recommend reading this whole piece especially if you’re well into astronomy, biology, or astrobiology and the topic of evolution occurring elsewhere in the Universe.

Image: Cover art for Carl Sagan’s ‘The Dragons of Eden’

by SciAm’s Michael Shermer

What are the odds that intelligent, technically advanced aliens would look anything like the ones in films, with an emaciated torso and limbs, spindly fingers and a bulbous, bald head with large, almond-shaped eyes? What are the odds that they would even be humanoid? In a YouTube video, produced by Josh Timonen of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, I argue that the chances are close to zero (www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKAXrmkx12g). Richard Dawkins himself made this interesting observation in a private communication after viewing it:

I would agree with [Shermer] in betting against aliens being bipedal primates, and I think the point is worth making, but I think he greatly overestimates the odds against. [University of Cambridge paleontologist] Simon Conway Morris, whose authority is not to be dismissed, thinks it positively likely that aliens would be, in effect, bipedal primates. [Harvard University biologist] Ed Wilson gave at least some time to the speculation that, if it had not been for the end-Cretaceous catastrophe, dinosaurs might have produced something like the attached [referring to paleontologist Dale A. Russell’s illustrated evolutionary projection of how a bipedal dinosaur might have evolved into a reptilian humanoid].

I replied to Dawkins that if something like a smart, technological, bipedal humanoid has a certain level of inevitability because of how evolution unfolds, then it would have happened more than once here. In his 2001 book Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Robert Wright argues that our existence precludes other terrestrial intelligences of our level from arising. But Neandertals were as close as one can get to a counterfactual experiment: they had hundreds of thousands of years to themselves in Europe without our interference and showed nothing like the technological and cultural progress of the modern humans who displaced them. Dawkins’s rejoinder to me is enlightening:

But you are leaping from one extreme to the other. In the film vignette, you implied a quite staggering rarity, so rare that you don’t expect two humanoid life-forms in the entire universe. Now you are … pointing out, correctly, that a certain inevitability would predict that humanoids should have evolved more than once on Earth! So, yes, we can say that humanoids are fairly improbable, but not necessarily all that improbable! Anything approaching “a certain inevitability” would mean millions or even billions of humanoid life-forms in the universe, simply because the number of available planets is so huge. Now, my guess is intermediate between your two extremes … I suspect that humanoids are not so very rare as to justify the statistical superlatives that you permitted yourself in the vignette.

Good point. But of the 60 to 80 phyla of animals, only one, the chordates, led to intelligence, and only the vertebrates actually developed it. Of all the vertebrates, only mammals evolved brains big enough for higher intelligence. And of the 24 orders of mammals only one—ours, the primates—has technological intelligence. As the late Harvard evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr concluded: “Nothing demonstrates the improbability of the origin of high intelligence better than the millions of phyletic lineages that failed to achieve it.” In fact, Mayr calculated that even though there have evolved perhaps as many as 50 billion species on Earth, “only one of these achieved the kind of intelligence needed to establish a civilization.”

The late astronomer Carl Sagan, in a Planetary Society debate with Mayr (Bioastronomy News, Vol. 7, No. 4, 1995), noted that technologically communicating species “may live on the land or in the sea or air. They may have unimaginable chemistries, shapes, sizes, colors, appendages and opinions. We are not requiring that they follow the particular route that led to the evolution of humans. There may be many different evolutionary pathways, each unlikely, but the sum of the number of pathways to intelligence may nevertheless be quite substantial.”

Thus, the probability of intelligent life evolving elsewhere in the cosmos may be very high even while the odds of it being humanoid may be very low. I strongly suspect that we are blinded by Protagoras’ bias (“Man is the measure of all things”) when we project ourselves into the alien Other.

laboratoryequipment: Chimpanzees are Smart EatersChimpanzees watch what they eat and when, which may show that these primates are giving some thought to the quality of their food, according to Purdue Univ. research.“There is an association between the time of day primates eat certain resources and the nutritional quality of those resources, suggesting consumption may track nutrient content,” says Bryce Carlson, an assistant professor of anthropology who studies primate ecology and nutrition in human evolution. “We can’t say for sure if chimpanzees are consciously selecting the leaves when nutritional content is greatest, but this correlation presents an intriguing hypothesis to explain feeding behavior in this primate species and mechanisms for ingestive behavior in general.”Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/03/chimpanzees-are-smart-eaters
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laboratoryequipment:

Chimpanzees are Smart Eaters

Chimpanzees watch what they eat and when, which may show that these primates are giving some thought to the quality of their food, according to Purdue Univ. research.

“There is an association between the time of day primates eat certain resources and the nutritional quality of those resources, suggesting consumption may track nutrient content,” says Bryce Carlson, an assistant professor of anthropology who studies primate ecology and nutrition in human evolution. “We can’t say for sure if chimpanzees are consciously selecting the leaves when nutritional content is greatest, but this correlation presents an intriguing hypothesis to explain feeding behavior in this primate species and mechanisms for ingestive behavior in general.”

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/03/chimpanzees-are-smart-eaters

sagansense: Co-Discoverer of Evolution by Natural Selection: Alfred Russel Wallace Letters Go OnlineAlfred Russel Wallace may not be a name as well-known as Charles Darwin, but London’s Natural History Museum is one of many institutions that believes it should be. The reason why is simple: ask the average person in the street who discovered natural selection, they will say, “Darwin”. In fact it was discovered by Darwin and Wallace — both scientists arrived at the conclusion independently in the 19th century, and in fact the original publication of the theory featured both of their names on the cover. A hundred years after his death, the Natural History Museum (NHM) is hoping to address this and to make 2013 the “Year of Wallace”. By doing so, it hopes to publicly reinstate the Victorian as the co-discoverer of one of the most important discoveries in the history of science. The NHM has this week launched Wallace Letters Online, a website that showcases for the first time the correspondence Wallace had during his life and research. All surviving letters have been scanned and transcribed by museum volunteers and staff, and can be freely read and downloaded. Who was Alfred Wallace? One need only speak to George Beccaloni, NHM curator and director of the Wallace Correspondence Project, to discover why Wallace was such an important character in the scientific history books. “When he died it’s been said that he was the most famous person in the world,” Beccaloni tells Wired.co.uk. “Every newspaper around the world ran obituaries about him and called him the last of the great Victorians. “Wallace received a lot of credit in his lifetime for being the co-discoverer [of natural selection]. He was awarded every honour that it’s possible for a biologist to receive in Britain, including the most prestigious honour of the Royal Society, the Copley Medal.” Problematically, natural selection was a distinctly controversial topic when it was proposed, and so after his death in 1913, Wallace’s name devolved into relative obscurity. “It was only when modern genetics and population ecology emerged in the late-1930s that people realised that natural selection was the key to evolution,” says Beccaloni. “People got interested in the history of the subject and in where the idea came from and they looked back and saw Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’ and didn’t look any further.” Beccaloni is something of a Wallace evangelist, but he’s not alone. He recently travelled with fellow Wallace fan Bill Bailey to Indonesia to film a two-part documentary for the BBC about the late scientist’s discoveries. (“I went out as a sort of personal Wallace fact checker,” says Beccaloni.) The documentary is set to be broadcast later this year. For an insight into the life of Wallace, the Natural History Museum’s Wallace Letters Online website is now open to the public.
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sagansense: Co-Discoverer of Evolution by Natural Selection: Alfred Russel Wallace Letters Go OnlineAlfred Russel Wallace may not be a name as well-known as Charles Darwin, but London’s Natural History Museum is one of many institutions that believes it should be. The reason why is simple: ask the average person in the street who discovered natural selection, they will say, “Darwin”. In fact it was discovered by Darwin and Wallace — both scientists arrived at the conclusion independently in the 19th century, and in fact the original publication of the theory featured both of their names on the cover. A hundred years after his death, the Natural History Museum (NHM) is hoping to address this and to make 2013 the “Year of Wallace”. By doing so, it hopes to publicly reinstate the Victorian as the co-discoverer of one of the most important discoveries in the history of science. The NHM has this week launched Wallace Letters Online, a website that showcases for the first time the correspondence Wallace had during his life and research. All surviving letters have been scanned and transcribed by museum volunteers and staff, and can be freely read and downloaded. Who was Alfred Wallace? One need only speak to George Beccaloni, NHM curator and director of the Wallace Correspondence Project, to discover why Wallace was such an important character in the scientific history books. “When he died it’s been said that he was the most famous person in the world,” Beccaloni tells Wired.co.uk. “Every newspaper around the world ran obituaries about him and called him the last of the great Victorians. “Wallace received a lot of credit in his lifetime for being the co-discoverer [of natural selection]. He was awarded every honour that it’s possible for a biologist to receive in Britain, including the most prestigious honour of the Royal Society, the Copley Medal.” Problematically, natural selection was a distinctly controversial topic when it was proposed, and so after his death in 1913, Wallace’s name devolved into relative obscurity. “It was only when modern genetics and population ecology emerged in the late-1930s that people realised that natural selection was the key to evolution,” says Beccaloni. “People got interested in the history of the subject and in where the idea came from and they looked back and saw Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’ and didn’t look any further.” Beccaloni is something of a Wallace evangelist, but he’s not alone. He recently travelled with fellow Wallace fan Bill Bailey to Indonesia to film a two-part documentary for the BBC about the late scientist’s discoveries. (“I went out as a sort of personal Wallace fact checker,” says Beccaloni.) The documentary is set to be broadcast later this year. For an insight into the life of Wallace, the Natural History Museum’s Wallace Letters Online website is now open to the public.
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sagansense:

Co-Discoverer of Evolution by Natural Selection: Alfred Russel Wallace Letters Go Online

Alfred Russel Wallace may not be a name as well-known as Charles Darwin, but London’s Natural History Museum is one of many institutions that believes it should be.

The reason why is simple: ask the average person in the street who discovered natural selection, they will say, “Darwin”. In fact it was discovered by Darwin and Wallace — both scientists arrived at the conclusion independently in the 19th century, and in fact the original publication of the theory featured both of their names on the cover.

A hundred years after his death, the Natural History Museum (NHM) is hoping to address this and to make 2013 the “Year of Wallace”. By doing so, it hopes to publicly reinstate the Victorian as the co-discoverer of one of the most important discoveries in the history of science.

The NHM has this week launched Wallace Letters Online, a website that showcases for the first time the correspondence Wallace had during his life and research. All surviving letters have been scanned and transcribed by museum volunteers and staff, and can be freely read and downloaded.

Who was Alfred Wallace?
One need only speak to George Beccaloni, NHM curator and director of the Wallace Correspondence Project, to discover why Wallace was such an important character in the scientific history books.

“When he died it’s been said that he was the most famous person in the world,” Beccaloni tells Wired.co.uk. “Every newspaper around the world ran obituaries about him and called him the last of the great Victorians.

“Wallace received a lot of credit in his lifetime for being the co-discoverer [of natural selection]. He was awarded every honour that it’s possible for a biologist to receive in Britain, including the most prestigious honour of the Royal Society, the Copley Medal.”

Problematically, natural selection was a distinctly controversial topic when it was proposed, and so after his death in 1913, Wallace’s name devolved into relative obscurity.

“It was only when modern genetics and population ecology emerged in the late-1930s that people realised that natural selection was the key to evolution,” says Beccaloni. “People got interested in the history of the subject and in where the idea came from and they looked back and saw Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’ and didn’t look any further.”

Beccaloni is something of a Wallace evangelist, but he’s not alone. He recently travelled with fellow Wallace fan Bill Bailey to Indonesia to film a two-part documentary for the BBC about the late scientist’s discoveries. (“I went out as a sort of personal Wallace fact checker,” says Beccaloni.) The documentary is set to be broadcast later this year.

For an insight into the life of Wallace, the Natural History Museum’s Wallace Letters Online website is now open to the public.

Antiscience legislation in Arizona

deconversionmovement:

A new antiscience bill was introduced in the Arizona Senate. A typical instance of the “academic freedom” strategy for undermining the teaching of evolution and climate change, Senate Bill 1213 would, if enacted, call on state and local education administrators to endeavor to “create an environment in schools that encourages students to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues” and to “assist teachers to find effective ways to present the science curriculum as it addresses scientific controversies.”

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Wow. I’m really fascinated by the rhetoric that is used in bills like this to make it sound like it’s scientific. I also like how they put “global warming” right next to human cloning in their list of “scientific controversies.”

But mostly, I’m just going to go in the other room and cry for Arizona.

Missouri Republican proposes bill to require teaching of ‘intelligent design’

deconversionmovement:

Legislation proposed in the Missouri House of Representatives on Wednesday would require schools to treat the theory of evolution and intelligent design equally.

The Missouri Standard Science Act states the theory of evolution must be taught side-by-side with intelligent design in public elementary and secondary schools. The bill also requires any textbook that discusses evolution to “give equal treatment to biological evolution and biological intelligent design.”

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Senator Mansplaining

mansplained:

Did anyone see this priceless footage of a Louisiana senator who is pushing for creationism to be taught in science class? There is literal facepalming when he Mansplainingly interrupts the female science teacher to pompously ask about when the bacteria “evolves” into human beings… because the jackass doesn’t even understand what Darwin’s theory is. Priceless. 

http://www.upworthy.com/senator-asks-for-proof-of-evolution-discovers-he-doesnt-actually-understand-what

I highly recommend watching this video. The facepalming is almost audible.

I also find it really fascinating that this creationist and others always insist on calling it “Darwinism,” or emphasize the fact that it’s Darwin’s theory of evolution. Sorry, but we don’t all need to follow a figure (that’s religion, silly!) in order for our ideas to have validity. Evolution is just something that happens.

deconversionmovement: Turkey’s science state council halts publication of evolution books The Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) has put a stop to the publication and sale of all books in its archives that support the theory of evolution, daily Radikal has reported. The evolutionist books, previously available through TÜBİTAK’s Popular Science Publications’ List, will no longer be provided by the council. The books have long been listed as “out of stock” on TÜBİTAK’s website, but their further publication are now slated to be stopped permanently. Books by Richard Dawkins, Alan Moorehead, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Levontin and James Watson are all included in the list of books that will no longer be available to the Turkish readers. In early 2009, a huge uproar occurred when the cover story of a publication by TÜBİTAK was pulled reportedly because it focused on Darwin’s theory of evolution. The incident led to intense criticism and resulted in finger-pointing by various officials of that publication and its parent institute. A few months later, the article in question appeared as the publication’s cover story. See, apatheists and accommodationists; this is why we can’t stay quiet.  This is why we can’t live and let live.  Our silence gives them more authority—either because they feel that our silence is a way of saying we don’t care or because our silence is means to admit that what they’re doing is acceptable and even right.  We must care; moreover, the primary way of getting someone to realize that they’re wrong is by telling them.  In the case of these obdurate zealots, the voices must be louder; they must be less tolerant of this kind of behavior.  So, if you think you’re doing everyone a favor by remaining silent, you’re wrong; you’re committing an injustice.  You’re telling them that it’s okay to march on gay parades; you’re telling them that it’s okay to strip women of their rights; you’re telling them that it’s okay to prohibit children from learning evolution; you’re telling them that it’s okay to acid bathe children seeking an education and to murder children during exorcisms.  In this world, silence is a form of permission and I will not grant them permission.  These type of religious people will change or be changed; their doctrines will change—thus, changing the face of their religion—or their doctrines will be brought down and their religion along with them.  That is our ultimatum and all out of respect for human rights and those who fought long and hard for the free enterprise of reason; wherever and whenever rights are infringed upon or the free expression of reason is limited or even censored, we should speak.  Speak regardless of who’s offended; speak regardless of what’s jeopardized; speak even if you are threatened; fear not the chains of dogma that have enslaved minds for centuries.  Those chains are looser and rustier now than ever; let us proceed and let us break them.
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deconversionmovement:

Turkey’s science state council halts publication of evolution books

The Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) has put a stop to the publication and sale of all books in its archives that support the theory of evolution, daily Radikal has reported.

The evolutionist books, previously available through TÜBİTAK’s Popular Science Publications’ List, will no longer be provided by the council.

The books have long been listed as “out of stock” on TÜBİTAK’s website, but their further publication are now slated to be stopped permanently.

Books by Richard Dawkins, Alan Moorehead, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Levontin and James Watson are all included in the list of books that will no longer be available to the Turkish readers.

In early 2009, a huge uproar occurred when the cover story of a publication by TÜBİTAK was pulled reportedly because it focused on Darwin’s theory of evolution.

The incident led to intense criticism and resulted in finger-pointing by various officials of that publication and its parent institute.

A few months later, the article in question appeared as the publication’s cover story.

See, apatheists and accommodationists; this is why we can’t stay quiet.  This is why we can’t live and let live.  Our silence gives them more authority—either because they feel that our silence is a way of saying we don’t care or because our silence is means to admit that what they’re doing is acceptable and even right.  We must care; moreover, the primary way of getting someone to realize that they’re wrong is by telling them.  In the case of these obdurate zealots, the voices must be louder; they must be less tolerant of this kind of behavior.  So, if you think you’re doing everyone a favor by remaining silent, you’re wrong; you’re committing an injustice.  You’re telling them that it’s okay to march on gay parades; you’re telling them that it’s okay to strip women of their rights; you’re telling them that it’s okay to prohibit children from learning evolution; you’re telling them that it’s okay to acid bathe children seeking an education and to murder children during exorcisms.  In this world, silence is a form of permission and I will not grant them permission.  These type of religious people will change or be changed; their doctrines will change—thus, changing the face of their religion—or their doctrines will be brought down and their religion along with them.  That is our ultimatum and all out of respect for human rights and those who fought long and hard for the free enterprise of reason; wherever and whenever rights are infringed upon or the free expression of reason is limited or even censored, we should speak.  Speak regardless of who’s offended; speak regardless of what’s jeopardized; speak even if you are threatened; fear not the chains of dogma that have enslaved minds for centuries.  Those chains are looser and rustier now than ever; let us proceed and let us break them.

anndruyan: altoidyoda: This is from my homeschooled nieces and nephews’ “science” textbook. Best quotes: “We do not have time to discuss all of the evidence against evolution in this book.” “First, there is no evidence for it.” “So, if there were once creatures that were becoming humans, there should be fossils preserved from all those different creatures.” “Do you realize that absolutely no fossils exist of a half-man/half-ape.” Do me a favor and never ever again write another science book, thanks author. This is just upsetting.
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anndruyan:

altoidyoda:

This is from my homeschooled nieces and nephews’ “science” textbook.

Best quotes:

“We do not have time to discuss all of the evidence against evolution in this book.”

“First, there is no evidence for it.”

“So, if there were once creatures that were becoming humans, there should be fossils preserved from all those different creatures.”

“Do you realize that absolutely no fossils exist of a half-man/half-ape.”

Do me a favor and never ever again write another science book, thanks author.

This is just upsetting.

scinerds: mothernaturenetwork: Bonobos buy friends with bananas Sharing with strangers is not unique to humans, according to a new study by Duke University anthropologists, whether it’s motivated by altruism or affability. “Humans learn at an early age that sharing is a virtue, despite a common urge to hoard toys from preschool peers. We tend to think of this as a uniquely human ethos, elevating us above other, greedier animals. But as a new study highlights, the kind of selfless behaviors that help build our social networks may have evolved long before we did.”A very interesting read!
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scinerds:

mothernaturenetwork:

Bonobos buy friends with bananas
Sharing with strangers is not unique to humans, according to a new study by Duke University anthropologists, whether it’s motivated by altruism or affability.


“Humans learn at an early age that sharing is a virtue, despite a common urge to hoard toys from preschool peers. We tend to think of this as a uniquely human ethos, elevating us above other, greedier animals. But as a new study highlights, the kind of selfless behaviors that help build our social networks may have evolved long before we did.”

A very interesting read!

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