Among the earliest forms of tools used by the ancestors of modern humans, a stone split to form a razor-sharp cutting edge has been used by palaeontologists investigating our evolution for decades. But monkeys, it appears, have thrown “a bit of a spanner in the works”, according to academics at Oxford University and elsewhere.
Altruism is real and developed because it confers an evolutionary advantage that is ultimately greater than the benefits of selfishness, an international team of mathematicians claims to have proved. Evolutionary biologists have sometimes struggled with the idea that genuine altruism can exist, given the belief that all life is shaped by a constant Darwinian battle that allows only the “survival of the fittest”. Amid such a bitter contest, why would one organism help another without getting something in return?
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