WEBVTT - Does Kin Selection Explain Altruism? 0:00:00.960 --> 0:00:04.160 Welcome to you stuff you should know from House Stuff 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:12.400 Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm 0:00:12.480 --> 0:00:15.960 Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry, puzzling 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:20.599 us as always with their jibber jabber, Wait jars. That 0:00:20.680 --> 0:00:24.919 was funny. Should we say what happened? No? No? I 0:00:25.160 --> 0:00:27.160 used to be leieve it mysterious al right, like whether 0:00:27.240 --> 0:00:30.280 Jerry exists or not? Oh, she exists. You know a 0:00:30.320 --> 0:00:34.120 lot of people out there and not convinced. Yeah. Still 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:36.760 even though she's we've shown pictures of her with her 0:00:36.800 --> 0:00:41.800 face blurred, could be a workaday actress. She's appeared at 0:00:42.680 --> 0:00:45.280 scores of live events and met people in person, same 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:48.960 actress but with like a gig. And she even spoke 0:00:49.360 --> 0:00:55.640 on our Guatemala episodes. That was Stanley Kubrick's doing. How 0:00:55.720 --> 0:00:59.320 are you sir? Good? Good? I'm excited about this one. 0:00:59.320 --> 0:01:02.840 This is Nieto. Are you a Kins selection? I thought 0:01:02.880 --> 0:01:05.520 it was you know me, like any you bring up 0:01:05.800 --> 0:01:08.640 the name Charles Darwin and you just see my face 0:01:08.720 --> 0:01:12.280 light up. Yeah, so you know that? Um that How 0:01:12.360 --> 0:01:16.360 Stuff Works trivia event that you and longer hosted. You 0:01:16.400 --> 0:01:20.200 guys had some hard questions, but one that my team 0:01:20.280 --> 0:01:24.360 got right. It was a sixth part question, yes, and 0:01:24.360 --> 0:01:26.280 there was a couple of tough ones in there, but 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:31.000 it was Charles Darwin or Chuck D from Public Enemy 0:01:31.200 --> 0:01:34.240 Charles D or Chuck D. And then we named off 0:01:34.440 --> 0:01:37.440 five or six things. I think it was six, and 0:01:38.080 --> 0:01:41.320 it was basically, who was it Charles D or Chuck D? Yeah, like, 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:46.200 who's the peskytarian? You don't know? Well we did. It 0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:49.600 was Chuck D who married his first cousin, Charles Darwin. 0:01:50.040 --> 0:01:53.720 That one I definitely knew, because I remember Darwin was 0:01:53.800 --> 0:01:57.400 kind of anxious as he was learning about evolution and 0:01:57.480 --> 0:02:01.559 natural selection in genetics that he had married his first cousin. 0:02:01.640 --> 0:02:03.800 He started to get kind of worried about his kid. Yeah, 0:02:03.840 --> 0:02:05.520 he said, should I marry her? And then he said 0:02:05.720 --> 0:02:10.679 it was Jennifer Connelly. She's beautiful. Where did you pull 0:02:10.720 --> 0:02:12.799 that one from? Well? She played Darwin's wife in the 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:15.120 Darwin movie. Oh, well that makes a lot more sense. 0:02:15.400 --> 0:02:18.839 Had I known that, I would have been like, great reference. Sorry, man, 0:02:19.000 --> 0:02:20.919 he's like, I gotta marry her? Did you see her? 0:02:21.000 --> 0:02:24.520 And uh? Who played Darwin? Paul Bettanya, Well, he was 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:28.160 her husband already were they married. I don't know if 0:02:28.160 --> 0:02:31.160 they are not anymore, but they were for a while. Okay, 0:02:31.800 --> 0:02:35.520 whatever became of him, he was great and he's around good. 0:02:36.160 --> 0:02:39.799 Nobody's treading the bowlds. Oh yeah, I'll but he is too. 0:02:39.840 --> 0:02:44.280 It sounds like something do Uh. I didn't even get 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:48.040 to say that Jennifer Connelly movie. I was gonna say proof. Nah, 0:02:49.000 --> 0:02:53.160 let's just move on. What was it? I can't think 0:02:53.200 --> 0:02:57.400 of the name of it. The Darren Aronofsky. Uh oh, 0:02:57.600 --> 0:02:59.800 Requiem for a Dream Yeah. Yeah, it's like I gotta 0:02:59.800 --> 0:03:01.880 marry here. Did you see her in recrect for a 0:03:01.960 --> 0:03:05.359 dream Man? That was a That was a crazy movie, 0:03:05.520 --> 0:03:09.080 great movie, but not for the faint of heart. No, no, 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:12.359 so Chuck. We've got a whole evolution suite going on here, 0:03:12.639 --> 0:03:17.200 and this contributes to evolution natural selection. We've covered Charles Darwin, 0:03:17.320 --> 0:03:21.280 the man himself, that's right. Um, we've done evolved in 0:03:21.360 --> 0:03:28.919 isolation to put together an extinction. Yes, bam, that's probably 0:03:28.919 --> 0:03:31.400 all of them. But um, this one's kind of like 0:03:31.440 --> 0:03:34.960 a nuanced version of it of the evolution suite, of 0:03:35.000 --> 0:03:39.040 the idea of evolution, but it actually is a fulcrum 0:03:39.120 --> 0:03:42.720 or lever something on which a buttress the the the 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:47.680 whole idea of evolution and natural selection and what drives 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:51.200 it or if it's even real kind of swings. It's 0:03:51.240 --> 0:03:54.400 easy to overlook, but there's a real problem. Like Darwin 0:03:54.480 --> 0:03:57.680 had all this great stuff laid out with his theory 0:03:57.680 --> 0:04:01.920 of evolution by natural selection, and um, it basically goes 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:05.360 as everybody knows, a little something like this A one 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:08.680 and to do so, I wish we had a natural 0:04:08.680 --> 0:04:12.920 selection song we could play boom uh. Well, it goes 0:04:13.000 --> 0:04:17.320 like this. Animals need to reproduce for the species to survive, 0:04:18.000 --> 0:04:21.360 and it's hard sometimes for little eggs to survive harsh 0:04:21.400 --> 0:04:24.560 environments and seeds and things. So they make lots and 0:04:24.640 --> 0:04:27.840 lots of them. That's right, that's part one. And they 0:04:27.880 --> 0:04:29.640 make lots and lots of them because a lot of 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:32.320 them don't survive. Like you said, um, but a lot 0:04:32.360 --> 0:04:36.200 of these things that try to reproduce don't have the 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:40.200 good genes, right, so they fail to reproduce. They've got 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:44.080 tough skins, not Levi's, so they're right, So the tough 0:04:44.120 --> 0:04:50.160 skins tend to die out right. Instead, the levies continue 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:53.039 on because they've got the good genes. So therefore they 0:04:53.080 --> 0:04:59.120 are more apt to survive and reproduce and be successful 0:04:59.480 --> 0:05:02.839 than they are the tuskan counterparts. So what we have 0:05:02.920 --> 0:05:06.000 there is called survival of the fittest. You are reproductively 0:05:06.120 --> 0:05:10.279 fit if you are likely to go on and bear 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:15.479 fruit as it were. Yeah, baby fruit. Darwin realized early 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:19.040 on to the variation was a big key to all this. Um. 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:22.280 You take two sets of pigs and they have baby pigs, 0:05:22.600 --> 0:05:25.360 They're not all going to be identical. Some of those 0:05:25.400 --> 0:05:31.360 pigs will have little, seemingly insignificant details about themselves. Brown 0:05:31.440 --> 0:05:35.000 spots maybe, And but it turns out that brown spots 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:38.400 drive the lady pigs wild. It might be that easy. 0:05:38.440 --> 0:05:42.120 So this guy's mating left and right and has a 0:05:42.160 --> 0:05:46.320 bunch of kids, so his brown spots make him reproductively fit. 0:05:46.480 --> 0:05:48.440 That's right. What looks or not even looks like what 0:05:48.520 --> 0:05:50.960 could be a random variation could really lead to the 0:05:51.000 --> 0:05:55.520 survival of that pig and maybe an entire species. Yeah. 0:05:55.600 --> 0:05:59.640 I've heard this really interesting UM article on Nautilus I 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:03.880 think recently, and it was basically the idea that the 0:06:03.960 --> 0:06:08.320 human body is just a hackathon of Well, we need 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:10.120 to fix this problem, so let's come up with this 0:06:10.279 --> 0:06:13.080 or they humans started standing up on two legs, so 0:06:13.120 --> 0:06:16.360 we need to fix it with this um and but 0:06:16.520 --> 0:06:19.159 if you stem back and look at it, the human bodies, 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:22.240 is this really cluji thing held together with like duct 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:25.000 tape and bubblegum right, um like a v W you 0:06:25.120 --> 0:06:29.520 buck um and uh. The the author interviewed like I 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:33.200 think ten different biologists and said, you know, what's something 0:06:33.279 --> 0:06:36.600 you would change about the uh, the human body to 0:06:36.960 --> 0:06:38.720 improve it. That was basically just the hack. It was 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:41.040 pretty interesting. That's awesome. See if I can find it. 0:06:41.120 --> 0:06:42.760 Is that going to be in your best things? I've 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:46.279 read this week post blog post. I think so maybe 0:06:46.320 --> 0:06:48.440 it should be. And you read it while you were 0:06:48.480 --> 0:06:50.919 working out on your Nautilus machine. Now I read it 0:06:51.040 --> 0:06:55.400 on Nautilus website. Got you and they have a clever website. 0:06:55.440 --> 0:07:01.360 It's and a U T I L dot us. Oh 0:07:01.640 --> 0:07:04.560 see what they do? Yeah, so it's not a lie. 0:07:05.720 --> 0:07:11.400 Dot us are not told dot us not till Yes. Okay, 0:07:11.560 --> 0:07:14.640 so you talked about fitness. The more offspring you have, 0:07:14.880 --> 0:07:18.480 the more fit you are as a parent and as 0:07:18.520 --> 0:07:21.560 a mammal or animal or whatever. You've hit the nautilus 0:07:21.600 --> 0:07:23.840 so often that you're just totally fit. If you've had 0:07:23.840 --> 0:07:26.920 a bunch of kids. That's right, because uh, as we 0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:31.600 all know, not all, not of your genetic material goes 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:35.760 into each one of your little babies. Because you you know, 0:07:35.800 --> 0:07:38.480 you have sex with someone else, you gotta share, you 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:42.400 share compromise. So in order to increase the chances of 0:07:42.840 --> 0:07:45.560 one of your little babies having all of your genetic material, 0:07:45.960 --> 0:07:48.600 you need just need to more and more babies. It's amazing. 0:07:48.840 --> 0:07:53.400 That's weird, um, because I always thought that the you're 0:07:53.840 --> 0:07:56.200 the amount of genes that you pass on with set 0:07:56.600 --> 0:08:00.000 like or whatever went into your kid, right, Well, yeah, 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:03.480 but you have sex, and of these genes goes in 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:06.720 you have sex again, another set of your genes might 0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:08.560 get picked. I've never heard it put like that. That 0:08:08.600 --> 0:08:11.080 makes sense, though. I always thought the more like the 0:08:11.520 --> 0:08:16.040 drive to keep having kids and and reproduce was two 0:08:16.520 --> 0:08:18.360 because you were going to have fifty percent of your 0:08:18.840 --> 0:08:21.040 genes out there in the world no matter what. But 0:08:21.360 --> 0:08:24.240 all those kids could like you know, bite the dust. 0:08:25.160 --> 0:08:26.960 And so the more you have, the more insurance you 0:08:26.960 --> 0:08:29.240 have that those go on. Never thought of it the 0:08:29.280 --> 0:08:33.960 way you just but the upshot of all this and 0:08:34.480 --> 0:08:38.960 by extension, the upshot of Darwin's entire theory of evolution 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:45.880 by natural selection driven by variation is that you any 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:52.160 any any trait that an organism has that improves its 0:08:52.400 --> 0:08:56.400 capability to reproduce or its likelihood of reproducing, is going 0:08:56.440 --> 0:08:59.800 to be selected for, and that's going to lead to 0:08:59.880 --> 0:09:03.960 the evolution of the species. Right, And that basically the 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:06.800 whole point, this is the unspoken part, The whole point 0:09:06.800 --> 0:09:10.200 of everything is to reproduce, to pass your genes along. 0:09:10.480 --> 0:09:13.600 That was Richard dawkins contribution with the selfish gene. Right. 0:09:14.840 --> 0:09:18.040 The problem is, and Darwin saw this while he was 0:09:18.120 --> 0:09:22.679 coming up with his theory um was that there is 0:09:22.800 --> 0:09:27.160 behavior found in nature that does the exact opposite of that, 0:09:27.440 --> 0:09:32.320 where organisms choose it seems to live a life where 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:36.880 they don't reproduce and instead help others of their kind reproduce, 0:09:37.320 --> 0:09:42.320 which is called biologically altruistic behavior. And it makes zero 0:09:42.400 --> 0:09:46.840 sense whatsoever under um Darwin's theory of evolution. And it's 0:09:46.920 --> 0:09:49.000 just been a puzzle and a challenge to the theory 0:09:49.040 --> 0:09:52.680 ever since he first noticed that. Well, I think that's 0:09:52.679 --> 0:09:55.320 a great place for a break, my friend, and we'll 0:09:55.320 --> 0:10:16.640 talk about this weird thing after we get back. So 0:10:16.800 --> 0:10:19.840 Darwin Um talked a lot about competition. That was one 0:10:19.880 --> 0:10:23.599 of the big keys to his theory working is unfortunately, 0:10:23.640 --> 0:10:28.280 in nature, it can't be like elementary school field day 0:10:28.640 --> 0:10:31.360 where everyone gets a participant ribbon. Um. There's gonna be 0:10:31.360 --> 0:10:33.720 winners and losers, and the winners will go on to 0:10:33.760 --> 0:10:37.800 survive and the losers might not. But where this wrinkle 0:10:37.880 --> 0:10:43.800 comes in is what you mentioned before the break, biological altruism. Um. 0:10:44.080 --> 0:10:47.200 It's remarkable that there are, and we'll talk about some 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:50.520 of them, that there are species that don't even try 0:10:50.559 --> 0:10:54.679 to reproduce. So yeah, so well there's members of certain species, right, yeah, 0:10:55.000 --> 0:10:58.280 So a really good example is the b right, A 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:02.080 drone is a female and a female that I think, 0:11:02.120 --> 0:11:05.520 and and some be species are totally sterile, so they 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:09.000 can't reproduce anyway. But even if some of them could, 0:11:09.240 --> 0:11:13.520 they don't. Instead, they go out and collect honey, or 0:11:13.559 --> 0:11:17.040 they collect the nectar they make honey, They choose the 0:11:17.360 --> 0:11:19.800 pollen and spit it back up, and then do that 0:11:19.840 --> 0:11:21.200 a bunch of times, and all of a sudden you 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:24.360 have honey, which, as everybody knows, is nothing but be 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:32.559 vomit um. They tend to the offspring the young, they 0:11:32.600 --> 0:11:34.920 bring food to the queen, who is the only one 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:38.920 to reproduce. Doesn't make any sense whatsoever. They serve the 0:11:39.000 --> 0:11:42.800 queen because not only does that. So there's there's two 0:11:42.840 --> 0:11:45.800 things that play here that make the whole thing weird. One, 0:11:46.480 --> 0:11:50.640 if an individual organism is basically here to pass along 0:11:50.800 --> 0:11:55.520 its genes, then why would any individual organism not attempt 0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:59.120 to do that? Right? And Then secondly, and this is 0:11:59.160 --> 0:12:03.839 the real mystery, how could these traits that um that 0:12:04.600 --> 0:12:09.599 the organism is driven by to be helpful and altruistic 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:13.360 rather than be reproductive. How could that possibly be passed 0:12:13.400 --> 0:12:17.199 on from one generation to the next If that organism 0:12:17.360 --> 0:12:21.760 isn't passing that trait along, it's a big question mark. Man, 0:12:22.720 --> 0:12:27.280 Well it was, and it's not proven. But in the 0:12:27.360 --> 0:12:31.240 nineteen sixties there was a kid in school. It would 0:12:31.280 --> 0:12:35.479 later go on to be a very famous evolutionary biologist, 0:12:35.480 --> 0:12:37.920 but he was a graduate student in the sixties named 0:12:37.920 --> 0:12:40.480 William Hamilton's. He said, you know what I got this idea. 0:12:40.720 --> 0:12:44.560 It's called inclusive fitness or kin selection k I n 0:12:45.000 --> 0:12:54.000 Jerry selection. Not like a kindall, but kin selection. Inclusive fitness. Basically, Uh, 0:12:54.040 --> 0:12:57.120 here's what's going on here. It's not random when you 0:12:57.200 --> 0:13:00.400 see in nature this altruistic behavior of a part of 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:05.560 a species, of a member of family helping. Most times 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:09.199 they're helping their family. Yeah, this is actually supported by 0:13:09.200 --> 0:13:12.920 some studies. Very famously, it was supported by a study 0:13:13.040 --> 0:13:15.920 of um. Well, the number of studies of Florida scrub jays, 0:13:16.320 --> 0:13:19.160 which are pretty little blue birds, and some members of 0:13:19.200 --> 0:13:23.600 the Florida scrub jays species UM don't mate when it 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:28.400 comes time to mate during mating season, right. Instead, they 0:13:28.440 --> 0:13:33.120 help um gather food, They help defend nests and protect 0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:35.680 the eggs. They helped build their like here, let me 0:13:35.679 --> 0:13:38.080 build you a little sex room, brother, and you know, 0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:42.959 I'm gonna put a tie on the hen nesto later 0:13:43.240 --> 0:13:45.880 if you're tired. But you just go in there and 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:49.640 do your business. Hugs hugs brother deeply. He's like the 0:13:49.640 --> 0:13:52.520 whole family's proud of. But I'm gonna go out here 0:13:52.520 --> 0:13:54.800 and not have sex. I'm just gonna stay in guard 0:13:54.840 --> 0:14:02.080 and and maybe listen. That's that's the scrub jays and exactly. Uh, 0:14:02.120 --> 0:14:06.160 it's remarkable. So it doesn't make any sense, right, No, 0:14:06.600 --> 0:14:08.920 it doesn't until you investigate it through the lens of 0:14:08.960 --> 0:14:12.000 kin selection and so UM. This one study in particular 0:14:12.400 --> 0:14:16.840 UM that followed scrub jays as they didn't mate and 0:14:16.920 --> 0:14:21.040 instead carried out this altruistic helping behavior. They found that 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:26.160 of the seventy four relationships that were observed, forty eight 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:32.880 assisted their parents, gross uh sixteen helped their father again, 0:14:33.120 --> 0:14:37.600 Grody uh seven assisted a brother, two assisted their mother, 0:14:38.880 --> 0:14:42.080 and then one one out of all seventy four helped 0:14:42.080 --> 0:14:44.440 the stranger. And you can imagine that bird was probably 0:14:44.480 --> 0:14:46.480 just a little dim witted. Well, I was about to say, 0:14:46.480 --> 0:14:49.120 I thought it was confused maybe, but like you're my brother, right, 0:14:49.480 --> 0:14:52.080 or the researchers were confused and didn't realize that this 0:14:52.160 --> 0:14:56.320 was their close kind. But the point is this altruistic behavior. 0:14:56.440 --> 0:15:01.480 The study supports the idea that the organism, the animal, 0:15:01.600 --> 0:15:05.800 the person whoever, is helping somebody related to them, and 0:15:05.840 --> 0:15:09.000 therefore it does make sense an evolution because the person 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:12.760 is helping ensure that some of their genes, not necessarily 0:15:12.840 --> 0:15:17.360 their specific genes they are passing down through reproduction, but 0:15:17.560 --> 0:15:21.240 some of their genes through their direct blood relative. Um, 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:23.880 they're helping make sure that those get passed long and 0:15:23.920 --> 0:15:28.320 then then altruism starts to make sense. It's amazing. Uh 0:15:28.440 --> 0:15:32.880 you want to hear an ever evolutionary biologist joke about this? Yeah, 0:15:32.920 --> 0:15:36.760 I would gladly die for two brothers or four cousins 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:41.600 or eight second cousins. That's that's pretty good. Yeah, that 0:15:41.600 --> 0:15:44.120 makes sense. I read that and I thought that kind 0:15:44.120 --> 0:15:46.880 of describes it perfectly. It's well, it's not very funny 0:15:46.920 --> 0:15:51.720 because it's an evolutionary biology jokes, but it does describe it. Uh. 0:15:51.760 --> 0:15:53.680 So this happened in the nineteen sixties, and like I said, 0:15:53.720 --> 0:15:58.400 Hamilton's went on to write books and he actually came 0:15:58.480 --> 0:16:02.080 up with math it, he says, proves this to be 0:16:02.120 --> 0:16:05.240 the case. Yeah, because he used letters instead of numbers, 0:16:05.240 --> 0:16:08.600 So you know, it's legit. It's actually a pretty smart 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:11.840 little equation. It's called Hamilton's rule. I like it. Do 0:16:11.920 --> 0:16:14.880 you like it? Yeah? I mean it makes sense, it's distinct. 0:16:15.000 --> 0:16:18.000 I can understand it. You can dance to it. I'm right, 0:16:18.200 --> 0:16:21.000 it's got a good beat. I'm not threatened by it. 0:16:21.440 --> 0:16:23.520 So I like it. All right, Well, should we talk 0:16:23.520 --> 0:16:25.800 about it? I know it's a little uh esoteric to 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:30.400 talk about a math formula. Uh is easier looked at? Well, 0:16:30.880 --> 0:16:35.200 just close your eyes, everybody and imagine this. Okay, uh, well, 0:16:35.240 --> 0:16:38.200 in math terms, what we're talking about, it's an individual's 0:16:38.600 --> 0:16:42.320 relative genetic representation in the gene pool in the next 0:16:42.520 --> 0:16:46.320 in the following generation. So if you literally look at it, 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:49.600 it's be the letter B greater than the letter C. 0:16:50.080 --> 0:16:54.360 Over are right, So in this case, the B is 0:16:54.400 --> 0:16:57.280 greater than So that's the benefit, which I guess would 0:16:57.320 --> 0:17:01.800 be the likelihood that their gene were passed down. Okay, 0:17:01.840 --> 0:17:04.560 that would be the benefit. So the benefit is greater 0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:08.240 than the cost incurred by the person or the organism 0:17:08.280 --> 0:17:14.040 not reproducing, divided by the relationship. Right, So the closer 0:17:14.080 --> 0:17:18.800 you are, the likelier it is that you're going to 0:17:18.880 --> 0:17:22.640 enjoy a benefit over the cost. Yeah, there was. There's 0:17:22.680 --> 0:17:28.000 a PhD uh, a PhD um online named Bjorn b Ms. 0:17:28.760 --> 0:17:30.280 It was much smarter than me because I had a 0:17:30.280 --> 0:17:33.120 little trouble wrapping my brain around around how this math 0:17:33.200 --> 0:17:37.000 proves it um and and we'll we'll get into the 0:17:37.040 --> 0:17:38.840 alternative theory here in a minute, proves it over the 0:17:38.880 --> 0:17:43.160 alternative theory of group success um. And he basically said 0:17:43.160 --> 0:17:47.520 the altruistics the altruist act must be at least double 0:17:48.040 --> 0:17:51.680 the receiver's fitness in order for that altruist to gain 0:17:51.760 --> 0:17:55.159 representation in the next generation. Yeah, and and and it 0:17:55.240 --> 0:17:57.920 makes sense. So here's how it makes sense. If you, 0:17:58.520 --> 0:18:05.080 um are going to have two kids. Um, if you 0:18:05.160 --> 0:18:07.200 did reproduce and you were going to have two kids, 0:18:07.720 --> 0:18:10.159 but instead of having those two kids, you helped your 0:18:10.200 --> 0:18:16.800 brother and he was able to have three. There you go. Yeah, 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:20.600 they I saw. So I saw Hamilton's rule expressed differently 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:22.840 somewhere else, and it made it easier for me to understand. 0:18:23.080 --> 0:18:25.920 Let's hear your version RB minus C is greater than zero. 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:32.560 So if the relationship coefficient um times the benefit minus 0:18:32.600 --> 0:18:36.199 the cost is greater than zero, then go for it, 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:40.000 says nature. Then it makes sense altruistically. All right, Well, 0:18:40.040 --> 0:18:42.439 let's my math brain hurts. So let's take a break. 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:45.399 And uh, we even bragged about how we got that. 0:18:45.960 --> 0:18:47.840 I sort of get it. We'll take a break and 0:18:47.840 --> 0:18:49.960 talk more about some more animals who do this and 0:18:50.000 --> 0:19:09.800 the idea of group selection. All right, So we mentioned 0:19:09.840 --> 0:19:14.000 the scrub J, the scrubby little scrub J who likes 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:20.280 to build sex dungeons or his family. Uh. We talked 0:19:20.280 --> 0:19:24.200 about bees. They are also ants and wasps and other insects. 0:19:24.280 --> 0:19:29.720 Who served the queen. Um these workers. It's sort of 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:33.679 like insects socialism, almost working side by side for the 0:19:33.720 --> 0:19:37.280 benefit of the group. Forgetting my own yeah, forget my 0:19:37.320 --> 0:19:41.120 own reproduction. I want the colony to survive, and this 0:19:41.160 --> 0:19:44.720 is my job, and so I'm gonna do it well. Um. 0:19:44.760 --> 0:19:48.760 Another example is, uh, some animals have a call. They 0:19:48.760 --> 0:19:52.240 will signal out, hey, there's an intruder coming family toward 0:19:52.280 --> 0:19:54.560 the house. And I might be giving up my own 0:19:54.560 --> 0:19:57.159 life by drawing attention to myself, but I'm still going 0:19:57.200 --> 0:19:59.840 to do that now. I actually did see an explain 0:20:00.160 --> 0:20:02.600 for that that doesn't have to do with actual altruism 0:20:02.720 --> 0:20:07.360 merging selection them. Among mere cats, they have sentinels. Anytime 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:09.840 a gang of mere cats is out hunting, one of 0:20:09.880 --> 0:20:14.879 them is just standing up, looking very cute in all directions, 0:20:15.119 --> 0:20:18.600 and when they see danger, they call out to a 0:20:18.640 --> 0:20:21.520 warning to the rest of the group. But um, this 0:20:21.600 --> 0:20:25.000 one study that included like two thousand hours of of 0:20:25.160 --> 0:20:28.960 UM watching and observing these mere cats found that not 0:20:29.200 --> 0:20:33.639 one sentinel was killed during this time. And as a 0:20:33.640 --> 0:20:35.359 matter of fact, they were the ones that get away 0:20:35.400 --> 0:20:39.159 first because they're the ones watching, so they see first 0:20:39.200 --> 0:20:41.720 and then they call but it's actually that call is 0:20:41.760 --> 0:20:44.200 not much of a cost to the individual. Well, that's 0:20:44.200 --> 0:20:46.520 a mere cat. They're super smart. What about the dumb squirrel? 0:20:47.080 --> 0:20:50.239 I don't know. I mean maybe, although mere cats do 0:20:50.640 --> 0:20:54.480 very famously engage in altruistic behavior themselves. Like mere cat 0:20:54.560 --> 0:20:58.439 pups can't feed themselves, but apparently they can squeal and 0:20:58.560 --> 0:21:02.320 beg and um. Most of the time they will be fed, 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:05.320 but the mere cat feeding them is not necessarily and 0:21:05.440 --> 0:21:09.120 in most cases isn't their biological parents. It's somebody else. 0:21:09.160 --> 0:21:11.600 And mere cats definitely have that whole village to raise 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:14.600 a child thing going on for sure. Um, And it 0:21:14.720 --> 0:21:17.040 makes a lot of sense through kin selection and not 0:21:17.119 --> 0:21:19.800 another way. It's interesting. It's hard not to think of 0:21:20.080 --> 0:21:22.320 politics when you're reading this stuff in the animal world. 0:21:22.960 --> 0:21:26.520 You know, what's a good model for It depends on 0:21:26.640 --> 0:21:29.240 what you think. Well, I mean, it's a good model 0:21:29.280 --> 0:21:31.960 to understand it, I should say, yeah, I saw. I 0:21:32.040 --> 0:21:34.600 had a this funny. I was driving home from the 0:21:34.600 --> 0:21:37.960 grocery store the other day and there was a major intersection, 0:21:39.119 --> 0:21:41.600 uh near my house where the traffic lights were out, 0:21:42.240 --> 0:21:45.119 like four four away intersection and each one had their 0:21:45.119 --> 0:21:48.119 own turn lane, and it was rush hour, and I 0:21:48.200 --> 0:21:51.280 just laughed looking around like the American political system was 0:21:51.440 --> 0:21:55.040 entirely represented. Oh yeah, man. Some people just barreled through, 0:21:55.359 --> 0:22:00.280 didn't care. Some people, uh just wouldn't go. They were 0:22:00.280 --> 0:22:03.359 just like frozen and fear. Some people are like no 0:22:03.520 --> 0:22:06.040 you go, well, no you go? Will you go? And 0:22:06.040 --> 0:22:08.040 then someone behind one Honker, was like all right, I'll go, 0:22:08.680 --> 0:22:10.879 And you could just really kind of see everything, just 0:22:11.000 --> 0:22:14.359 like it really opened my eyes. And I think, I 0:22:14.600 --> 0:22:17.159 don't know what you would call me, because I'm the 0:22:17.480 --> 0:22:21.320 by the book guy. I'm like, blinking yellow doesn't mean stop, 0:22:21.359 --> 0:22:25.280 it means proceeds slowly, cautiously. But one was red and 0:22:25.280 --> 0:22:27.359 one is yellow. Everybody was stopping because it was just 0:22:27.400 --> 0:22:30.600 so crowded, exactly. Yeah. And there's definitely people who do 0:22:30.680 --> 0:22:32.520 see it the way you do and then go ahead 0:22:32.520 --> 0:22:35.080 and do that. But it does seem like humans have 0:22:35.760 --> 0:22:39.760 recently decided like, no, if it's red, blinking red and 0:22:39.800 --> 0:22:42.280 blinking yellow, the people with the yellow are going to 0:22:42.400 --> 0:22:44.520 stop eventually and let the people with the red go 0:22:45.040 --> 0:22:49.919 altruistic act. Very interesting, all right, So let's uh we 0:22:50.040 --> 0:22:55.239 teased group uh multi level selection or group selection. This 0:22:55.320 --> 0:22:58.359 is something Darwin talked a little bit about in the 0:22:58.440 --> 0:23:02.560 descentive man, but he is main focus was on the individual, 0:23:03.119 --> 0:23:06.120 but he dabbled in it. Uh, he dabbled in group play. 0:23:08.200 --> 0:23:11.840 But this is a theory where there are these altruistic traits. 0:23:11.840 --> 0:23:13.240 No one's denying that. We see it all over the 0:23:13.240 --> 0:23:17.320 animal kingdom. But it's not necessarily toward a family. It's 0:23:17.359 --> 0:23:20.320 just for the good of the whole group. Yeah. So 0:23:20.560 --> 0:23:23.680 the the whole idea of kin selection, apparently UM has 0:23:23.760 --> 0:23:27.639 been challenged, although not widely challenged UM by the idea 0:23:27.680 --> 0:23:31.800 that if you really look at some species, the species 0:23:31.840 --> 0:23:36.080 that are closely related, some of them don't do anything altruistically, 0:23:36.560 --> 0:23:39.560 and then others that do engage in altruism don't necessarily 0:23:39.600 --> 0:23:43.680 do it for close relations UM. So if that's the case, 0:23:43.720 --> 0:23:46.320 then the whole idea of kin selection is challenged because 0:23:46.359 --> 0:23:50.439 the basis of kin selection is that these are UM 0:23:50.680 --> 0:23:53.960 organisms helping to pass on some of their related traits 0:23:54.400 --> 0:23:58.840 that their relatives are passing along through reproduction. And if 0:23:58.880 --> 0:24:03.000 that's not the case, then that's that's the question. Mark returns. Well, yeah, 0:24:03.000 --> 0:24:05.440 and then there's the whole thing that there are in 0:24:05.440 --> 0:24:08.720 in groups of animals, some are related, some aren't. So 0:24:08.760 --> 0:24:11.800 it's hard to tell where one where group behavior stops 0:24:11.800 --> 0:24:14.760 and family behavior begins. So you have a lot of 0:24:15.200 --> 0:24:18.360 biologists saying this is just sort of semantical. We shouldn't 0:24:18.359 --> 0:24:22.040 be arguing about this. It's sort of the same their 0:24:22.080 --> 0:24:24.959 equivalent basically, helping the family is helping the group. Right. 0:24:25.200 --> 0:24:29.520 But then a few years back, very famous um aunt 0:24:29.600 --> 0:24:34.400 man EO. Wilson, who actually awesome guy, Like as far 0:24:34.400 --> 0:24:37.080 as scientists go, this guy should have statues erected to him. 0:24:37.160 --> 0:24:40.080 He's a very brave scientist. He's known as the father 0:24:40.160 --> 0:24:44.159 of sociobiology. Right. Um. He also, when he was a teenager, 0:24:44.280 --> 0:24:48.359 was the first to observe and um study fire ants 0:24:48.600 --> 0:24:52.200 when they just happened to be transported to South America 0:24:52.400 --> 0:24:55.040 as ballot or from South America to New Orleans as 0:24:55.080 --> 0:24:58.200 ballast in a ship. He happened to notice him for 0:24:58.240 --> 0:25:00.600 the first time fire ants in the Southeast red ants. 0:25:00.800 --> 0:25:03.000 He was there when they when they came about, and 0:25:03.080 --> 0:25:06.440 he ended up they didn't originate here, No, they were 0:25:06.480 --> 0:25:09.280 brought as like as in scoops of dirt from South 0:25:09.280 --> 0:25:12.199