Sublime

One of the key features that has helped all the nonhuman ultra-socials to cross over appears to be the need to defend a shared nest. The biologists Bert Hölldobler and E. O. Wilson summarize the recent finding that ultrasociality (also called “eusociality”)45 is found among a few species of shrimp, aphids, thrips, and beetles, as well as among wasp

Monkeys and humans share the same two variants of the serotonin gene (known as the short and long serotonin transporter alleles). In humans the short allele has been associated with impulsivity, aggression, sensation seeking, suicide attempts, and severe depression. Suomi showed that, at least in monkeys, the environment shapes how these genes affe

female mammals, and primates in particular, being able to work effectively in a social environment is much more important for their reproductive success than anything

The usual rules of sex roles, then, are ones of male display and female choosiness. This stems from that long-ago difference in investment between the sexes—the large resource-rich egg and the small streamlined sperm.

Trivers noted that evolution could create altruists in a species where individuals could remember their prior interactions with other individuals and then limit their current niceness to those who were likely to repay the favor. We humans are obviously just such a species. Trivers proposed that we evolved a set of moral emotions that make us play “

interaction between cultural and genetic evolution generated a process that can be described as autocatalytic, meaning that it produces the fuel that propels it. Once cultural information began to accumulate and produce cultural adaptations, the main selection pressure on genes revolved around improving our psychological abilities to acquire, store

El modo de comportamiento aunténticamente humano es, según esto, el de la fidelidad a plazos, y la infidelidad mientras los hijos son pequeños resultaría tan anormal como la monogamia de por vida.