Type “dog share…” into your search engine and you’ll instantly see cute results. In one clip, a yellow Labrador brings a toy to a fence and shares it with a neighbor’s dog.
The clips are fascinating, but are animals actually sharing? Is this a behavior that animals also know?
Through observation, scientists have discovered examples of sharing in the animal kingdom. It is often based on reciprocity, and there may be a future expectation that the giver will someday become the recipient.
animals may be altruistic
Sharing is considered an altruistic act. Altruism is an action It benefits the receiver, but not the giver.
For example, donating blood may be considered an altruistic act because the donor sacrifices a vital bodily fluid. But the donor receives nothing in exchange for his sacrifice, except to be proud.
Scientists have long studied and questioned why humans evolved to be altruistic. Humans are social creatures and depend on each other for survival. But some scholars We’ve debated whether humans are truly altruistic or whether we have another motive: wanting to feel good about ourselves.
The scholars was also discussed The role of altruism in animal behavior. Scientist Charles Darwin had a hard time fitting altruism into his theory of natural selection because he knew that some species make sacrifices without gaining any personal benefit. In the case of honeybees, for example, some bees refrained from producing their own offspring to feed the hive’s offspring.
(Credit:Xavier DbZ/Shutterstock)
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Puzzled by this behavior, Darwin described animal altruism as a type of evolutionary disorder. In 1964, another naturalist We proposed an explanation that animals are likely to share genetically related traits with other animals. This theory, known as “Hamilton’s Law,” provided a formula for predicting altruistic behavior based on both the recipient’s needs and genetic relationship to the donor.
Therefore, this theory argued that there is an innate urge to pass on genetic material, which motivates altruistic behavior in sharing resources with relatives in need.
Hamilton’s law has been used to explain altruistic behavior in animals. just like humans. The experts are discussed One criticism of this theory is that it does not take into account how hierarchical structures enforce shared behavior.
Similarly, other studies have found that genetics motivates sharing, up to a point. Simply put, some animals don’t like moochers.
Sharing may be important for survival
In a 1984 study in nature, Biologist Gerald S. Wilkinson observed vampire bats in the wild (Desmodus rotundus) It vomited blood back up for other bats that didn’t feed that night.
“The cost of not feeding all night is high; their risk of starvation is greatly increased,” said Wilkinson, now a professor and associate dean at the University of Maryland.
During his observations, Wilkinson tracked 184 vampire bats in Costa Rica. Over 26 months of research, he learned how bats are socially organized. He also observed how well-fed bats remained full each night, and it was obvious when the bats returned to roost hungry.
“If they [hadn’t eaten]their stomachs were shrinking,” Wilkinson says.
It is not uncommon for vampire bats to fail in their night hunts. They drink the blood of larger animals such as cows and horses, but both animals may find small bats a nuisance and chase them away.
If a failed bat returns to its roost, it may receive a regurgitated blood donation. Or, if you ask, you might be told to talk to Tsubasa because Men isn’t listening. If refused, bats asked to donate will push other bats away or simply turn away. But if the bat is willing to donate, the two will put their heads together so that a hungry bat can stroke the blood from the other’s mouth.
However, women shared only with women, and men were not included unless they were still young. Stingy bats did not participate in shared networks and were often turned away when they sought blood. So why do bats open their mouths wide and spit? round trip. “The benefits of sharing increase the likelihood that someone will repay you in the future,” Wilkinson says.
Please read: 7 surprising symbiotic relationships and how species help each other survive
Predicting sharing behavior
In the 2013 follow-up study at Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological SciencesWilkinson and then-graduate student Gerald G. Carter studied captive vampire bats that were subjected to intermittent fasting for two years.
The researchers were interested in whether kinship played a role in whether fed bats shared with fasted bats. They also wondered if “harassment” might have been a factor, in which hungry bats bullied the fed bats into giving them the equivalent of their lunch money.
The study found that fed bats were more likely to seek out fasted bats, meaning harassment was not a factor. Kinship was also not a driving factor, as most shared dyadic relationships (approximately 67 percent) were unrelated.
The biggest predictor was whether the fasting bats had shared food in the past, which was 8.5 times more important than kinship.
“There aren’t many examples of natural behavior like that of vampire bats,” Wilkinson said. “They are doing this on their own, and it has significant consequences down the road.”
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our writers are discovermagazine.com We use peer-reviewed research and high-quality sources in our articles, and our editors review them for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Check out the following sources used in this article.
Emily Lucchesi writes for some of the nation’s largest newspapers, including the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and a master’s degree from DePaul University. She also holds a Ph.D. She received her PhD in communications from the University of Illinois at Chicago with an emphasis on media framing, message construction, and stigma communication. Emily is the author of three nonfiction books. The third book, A Light in the Dark: Surviving More Than Ted Bundy, will be released by Chicago Review Press on October 3, 2023 and is co-authored with survivor Kathy Kleiner Rubin. There is.
