The Social Instinct How Cooperation Shaped the World

Nichola Raihani

eAudio - 2021

This program is read by the author.In the tradition of Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene, Nichola Raihani's The Social Instinct is a profound and engaging look at the hidden relationships underpinning human evolution, and why cooperation is key to our future survival."Enriching" —Publisher's WeeklyCooperation is the means by which life arose in the first place. It's how we progressed through scale and complexity, from free-floating strands of genetic material, to nation states. But given what we know about the mechanisms of evolution, cooperation is also something of a puzzle. How does cooperation begin, when on a Darwinian level, all that the genes in your body care about is being passed on to the next gene...ration? Why do meerkat colonies care for one another's children? Why do babbler birds in the Kalahari form colonies in which only a single pair breeds? And how come some coral wrasse fish actually punish each other... more