NEXT time you help an old lady across the road, ask yourself why you’re doing
it. Are you exercising your uniquely human sense of right and wrong as Lee
Dugatkin believes? or is your action a thinly disguised expression of genetic
self interest?

Are we, as Richard Dawkins and others suggest, purely selfish vehicles of
genes, with no greater aim than to perpetuate ourselves and other carriers of
our genes? Not so, says Dugatkin in Cheating Monkeys and Citizen Bees.
By looking at the behaviour of animals, we can reveal those “selfish” instincts.
Surprisingly, it emerges that—in some circumstances—they alone
produce the peaceful, law-abiding societies we humans so covet.

Dugatkin takes a different tack: he asks whether our understanding of animals
could inform the government of human society to encourage cooperative behaviour.
If we discover the circumstances in which animals cooperate, is there a chance
that we could we generate those artificially to create Utopia? His answers won’t
always surprise you, but he does offer a new way of thinking about human
society, as well as a host of amazing stories about the trials and motivations
of our animate relatives.

So back to the animals. The trait of cooperation has long fascinated
naturalists. Why does the bee work so hard for the good of another’s offspring?
If you show that there is a benefit, perhaps not immediately apparent but which
outweighs the costs of labour, then you have an answer. Biologists recognise
four explanations for cooperation in animals: among relatives; among friends
reciprocating each other’s generosity; selfish cooperation in which the
immediate rewards are higher than noncooperation; and cooperation for the good
of the group. Dugatkin takes us through each type in turn, explaining the theory
and background with a clarity that makes it accessible to anyone, before turning
to the question in hand. Can this mode of behaviour encourage human
altruism?

Historically, the family connection was the first route to understanding
animal altruism. Animals take care of their own because they share genes with
them. Genes for “taking care of your own” therefore take care of themselves and
do well. Ants, bees and wasps, the ultimate cooperators, turn out to be
super-related to one another within colonies: sisters are more related to each
other than they would be to their daughters, a closeness that is not possible in
most animals. Dwarf mongooses, who babysit while the parents are out, are
looking after their siblings. As humans, we are all familiar with the instinct
to protect kin, at its strongest when it comes to our young. Dugatkin wonders if
this instinct could be harnessed more effectively? Perhaps if the army were to
put siblings in the same units, soldiers would be braver, more willing to take
risks to protect their group. Management consultants might advise nepotism as
the most effective business strategy, building teams tied by blood.

Luckily, cooperation can and does evolve among non-relatives (we can’t all be
related closely enough). One way is known as reciprocal altruism. Animals will
be nice to each other because they can expect the favour to be returned in the
future. A male baboon who has low social status can occasionally get an illicit
mating with a female, but only if he can persuade another subordinate male to
help him scare the dominant male away from one of his closely guarded females.
The second baboon will risk being hurt in the fight even though he never gets to
share the reward. He does it because he knows that the other baboon is likely to
return the favour in the future, joining him in a coalition, and winning him an
illicit mating. But what if the friend cheats on him and fails to cooperate in
return? Theoretical biology has come up with an answer, says Dugatkin: if
animals meet each other frequently, and play a game where they can choose
whether or not to cooperate, a “tit-for-tat” strategy is successful. If someone
cheats on you, retaliate in the next round.

This kind of strategy certainly works in humans. We are extremely skilled at
remembering the behaviour of everyone we meet, constantly making judgments about
other people. But this leads to cooperation only if you frequently come across
the same people.

Another route to cooperation is when the benefits exceed the costs of
cooperating. Lions hunt in a pride because they couldn’t possibly catch large
wildebeest on their own, so they have nothing to lose and all to gain. When
lions hunt small animals, points out Dugatkin, they hunt alone—all for
one, and not enough for all. This cooperation tends to evolve in harsh
environments, where food is scarce or when the risk is high. So humans would be
better off if we had limited resources, and were constantly pulling together in
a crisis.

Controversial as group selection is, Dugatkin gives it equal weight as
another form of cooperation. Some animals cooperate because the benefit to the
whole group outweighs the cost to the individual. In certain species of ant, a
small group of unrelated queens founds each colony. One of the group braves the
outside world to forage for food for the others. Why? Because as the colonies
enlarge, there is fierce fighting between them, those colonies that are better
fed at an early stage are more likely to survive. Perhaps Dugatkin is attracted
to the notion of group selection because group instinct is demonstrably strong
in humans. Most biologists argue that it is rare to find a group of animals
living together and cooperating without them also being related. But this
situation is more common in humans.

Right, so if we use what we know from the behaviour of animals to construct a
naturally cooperative society, we should all be living in small, poor
communities and running family businesses, generation after generation? Such
behaviour may well engender a cooperative society, but most of us reject that
lifestyle in favour of the fast and furious freedom of the 20th century.

All is not lost, promises Dugatkin. Those evolutionary paths to cooperation
have their downsides. As the truism has it, there is little cooperation without
conflict. Small groups of kin do war with each other. Cooperative groups do
better because they outcompete other groups.

In animals, these conflicts can be violent. Traditional human societies
reduce conflict between groups by intermarriage. In modern society, where most
of our social groups are non-kin, overlapping of the groups will have the same
effect. If a member of another research team is also in your football squad, are
you less likely to play dirty in grant applications?

Perhaps we should aim for an open society, like those of dolphins or
elephants. But would we want to live like that, or do we value our allegiances?
“My overarching aim,” writes Dugatkin, “is to make the reader think about
cooperation from a different perspective.” He has certainly achieved that.

LYNN MARGULIS changed the way we view the world. If you haven’t heard of her,
or want a swift guide to her ideas, The Symbiotic Planet will bring you
up to speed. Her radical view of evolution is that microbes are the key to
understanding life on Earth, and she sees symbiosis as important a force as
competition for resources or battles for survival.

A distinguished professor at the University of Massachusetts, Margulis has
had a fascinating scientific career. Some will know her because of her
collaboration with James Lovelock, the Gaia theorist, but she has many famous
theories under her own belt—such as the division of life into five
kingdoms and the idea that some cell organelles like mitochondria were once
free-living bacteria.

Margulis’s world is dominated by wonderful creatures invisible to the naked
eye. Sex or death turn out to be oddities that can be understood only by looking
at the way single-celled protists behave. So we humans are little more than
massive microbial colonies. Our cells have evolved from an ancient intimate
association between three different types of bacteria.

This evolution by symbiosis, or symbiogenesis, may be responsible for much
more fundamental evolutionary change than we give it credit for. Did plants
manage to invade land because they carried fungi inside them, whose mycelia
became roots and whose DNA became incorporated into theirs?

But why stop at individual organisms? Margulis, in Gaia mode, argues that the
whole planet is a symbiotic system. All species are intimately connected with
one another. The global system remains stable because of the activities of
myriad bacteria, algae and other organisms.

With vivid imagery and colourful prose, Margulis explores the origins of
life, the essence of humanity and the functioning of the Earth. She challenges
scientific convention boldly, and her enthusiasm is as infectious as the
organisms which so fascinate her. Hand me a microscope—I want to know
more.