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Here Is A Defination - What Is Called Reciprocal Altruism ?

Reciprocal altruism is defined as altruistic behaviors that are performed to increase the likelihood of repayment in the future. Examples of reciprocal altruism exist in the animal world, such as dolphins helping other dolphins in need. Dolphins have been observed showing altruistic behavior towards other dolphins in their social group or even towards other cetacean species. This behavior, if true, suggests that dolphins and other toothed whales engage in reciprocal altruism, allowing them to evolve complex social behaviors similarly to other highly social mammals.

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49 views

Here Is A Defination - What Is Called Reciprocal Altruism ?

Reciprocal altruism is defined as altruistic behaviors that are performed to increase the likelihood of repayment in the future. Examples of reciprocal altruism exist in the animal world, such as dolphins helping other dolphins in need. Dolphins have been observed showing altruistic behavior towards other dolphins in their social group or even towards other cetacean species. This behavior, if true, suggests that dolphins and other toothed whales engage in reciprocal altruism, allowing them to evolve complex social behaviors similarly to other highly social mammals.

Uploaded by

Nafiul haque
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as RTF, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Various example of reciprocal altruism in the animal world

Here is a Defination - - -
What is called reciprocal altruism ?

Reciprocal altruism is when altruistic behaviors are performed because they increase the
likelihood of repayment in the future.Altruism refers to behaviors thats are perform for the sake
of benefiting others at a cost to oneself.For quite some time the presence of altruistic behaviors
in animals and humans was a genuine puzzle for the Darwinian account of evolution through
natural selection.It seemed impossible for an organism that acts unselfishly for the sake of
another organism to benefit in any way that would encourage that organism’s reproductive
success.This is simply because selfish individuals would on average have more resources than
altruistic individuals. After many generations,natural selection seemed to dictate that any
genetic basis for altruistic behavior should be eliminated from a population.Reciprocal Altruism
The theory of reciprocal altruism was first described by the evolutionary biologist, Robert
Trivers, as a solution to the problem of how altruistic behaviors directed toward nonkin could
have emerged through natural selection.

About Reciprocal Altruism we know - - -

It is often remarked that reciprocal altruism is not genuine altruism because it has the
seemingly selfish goals of repayment, whereas true altruism is usually defined as self-sacrifice
for the sole sake of benefiting others. The fact that altruistic behaviors could emerge through
natural selection via the mechanism of reciprocal altruism, however, says nothing about the
motives of the organism engaged in the altruistic act. It is important to recognize that reciprocal
altruism is a theory of how cooperation could have evolved, not a theory of the psychological
states of the altruist.

Is reanimal altraism realy ?

Some wildlife researchers believe that altruism—defined as an act in which an animal sacrifices
its own well-being for the benefit of another animal—is a well-documented behavior. Those
who say animal altruism exists cite examples such as dolphins helping others in need or a
leopard caring for a baby baboon.
For example, a cuckoo bird will lay an egg in the nest of a host bird of another species, usually
one with similar-looking eggs to its own. The host bird then looks after the egg as if it were its
true offspring. While some say this happens because other birds aren’t able to distinguish
cuckoo eggs, others have shown that cuckoos periodically return to nests where they’ve left
their eggs to see if all is well. If their young are still there, they will leave the nests alone. If not,
cuckoos will destroy the nests and kill any of the host birds’ eggs and chicks that happened to
survive. So taking care of a cuckoo’s offspring may just be a way for a host bird to protect what
she has left.

As a exmple we can say about dholphins!

There has been little discussion about dolphin behaviour in the debates over the social
evolution of higher mammals. A major reason has been that until recently few studies were
available that allowed comparison. In recent years some quantitative studies of dolphin gross
social architecture have been completed. Further, some important anecdotes about the
behaviour of these animals at sea and in captivity have been repeated often enough that some
assessment of them can also be made.one feature,ofter mentioned, is that dolphins show
altruistic behaviour towards schoolmates,or even toward cetaceans of other species.This
behaviour, if true,is important in the present debate about the occurrence of reciprocal
altruism in nature. We attempt here to assess the proposition that dolphins and other toothed
whales might be reciprocal altruism, and thus join the ranks of the highest of mammals in terms
of the evolution of social behavioral mechanisms.This assessment has special Importance
beacause the odontocete lincage has probably been separate or defference from other
placement mammals since the early Cenozoic.Our examples come mostly from the most
modern odontocete groups of animals,though some examples of epimeletic behavior come
from the most primitive family, the Platonistidae.

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