This article was originally published in the Guardian, December 13, 2004; used here with permission.

The Kindness of Strangers: Why Should Animals Help Out Stricken Humans – Does it Prove That Altruism Is a Natural Instinct?

by Johnjoe McFadden

It's a Wonderful Life is on most people's list of favourite Christmas movies. The hero George Bailey, played by James Stewart, is saved from suicidal despair by being shown the impact of his good deeds on the lives of his friends and neighbours. But are good deeds confined to our own species? It was perhaps a little early in the season for festive goodwill when a group of New Zealand swimmers recently had to depend on the apparent kindness of a group of wild dolphins. The dolphins circled the humans to form a protective circle that kept a great white shark at bay. But are animals really motivated by mercy or kindness? Do they know right from wrong?

Altruism – helping others at our own expense – puzzled Charles Darwin, whose theory predicted that individuals should act selfishly to serve their self-interest. Why should wolves share their kill; or sparrows draw attention to themselves by issuing a warning call when they spot a hawk? The problem wasn't really solved until the 1970s, when evolutionary biologists such as E. O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins started thinking in terms of genes, rather than individuals.

What Dawkins, Wilson and others realised was that our genes don't inhabit just our bodies but also those of our close relatives. Being kind to our relatives makes biological sense so long as it boosts the chances of our genes, carried in our relatives' bodies, making it through to the next generation.

This theory, known as kin selection, launched the discipline of sociobiology and provided evolutionary gene-based explanations for a myriad of puzzling behaviours, from the intricate social order of the ant nest to food-sharing among carnivores. But it can't explain the New Zealand dolphins, because they were obviously not related to the swimmers.

Altruism isn't always restricted to kith and kin. When a female vervet monkey is attacked, non-relatives will often come to her aid. Studies show that the likelihood that a non-relative helps depends on how recently the distressed monkey groomed the helper. These animals engage in what is called reciprocal altruism: you groom my back, and I'll groom yours. Many animals provide help on this tit-for-tat basis.

Vampire bats are prone to starvation and may die if they fail to find a meal after a night's hunting. But a successful bat with a bloated stomach will often regurgitate its food to feed a hungry colony mate. The bats are willing to help in the expectation that when they are hungry they will receive a meal themselves. Many sociobiologists are convinced that most of the institutions and structures of human society are based on this kind of reciprocal altruism.

Some behaviour is not easily understood, though, even in these terms. Animals will sometimes incur costs (forgo a meal) to relieve the distress of a complete stranger member of their species. Rats emit distress squeaks when raised (harmlessly) from the ground. Another rat will press a lever to lower the distressed animal even when it means that it must sacrifice a meal to pay for its kindness. Is this really altruism? Homer Simpson responded to the distressing sight of his daughter Lisa weeping inside his garage by closing the garage door. Maybe the rats are taking the Homer solution – pressing the lever to remove an annoying noise. The problem with all these experiments is that we can never know what's going on inside the animal's head.

Interspecies altruism is much rarer and confined to situations where both species have something to gain. Reef sharks will forgo the opportunity of lunching on a wrasse if the wrasse consents to pick the parasites off its body at a reef-cleaning station. The shark gets a free grooming and the wrasse gets a tasty nibble. But this mechanism is hardly relevant to the dolphins: what would they have expected to gain from protecting humans?

Dolphins are, of course, the favourite animal of new age romantics, who see them as some kind of aquatic hobbit, wiser and kinder than we corrupted humans. But conferring an ability to recognise right from wrong on animals would also have less cosy repercussions. Dolphins aren't always playful. Male dolphins form alliances to capture and force sex on females. Baby bottlenose dolphins are often found dead, apparently battered to death by adult dolphins. With the ability to distinguish right from wrong come responsibilities, at least in humans. But no one charges dolphins with rape or infanticide.

The most likely explanation for the dolphins' behaviour is that the New Zealanders were caught in the animals' instinctual response to the presence of a predator: form a corral to protect the weak and young. The dolphin's programme for recognising these may be prone to errors. The swimmers probably owe their survival to the fuzzy edges of biological programming.

This doesn't, of course, detract from the value of that remarkable encounter between two of the most intelligent species on the planet. George Bailey was saved from financial ruin by the apparent kindness of his neighbours; the New Zealand swimmers were saved from a shark by the apparent kindness of dolphins. Both stories show that life is indeed wonderful, if not always logical.

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