Have you ever heard of an animal perform an unselfish act?

Question

I was trying to figure out if "humanity" lived up to scrutiny. Are humans the only creature that do things like free an animal that may bite us, etc? Examples: a dog freeing a stranger from a trap, a monkey freeing a snake.

Answer 1

The existence of altruism among human and nonhuman animals was not coherently addressed by biology until the 1970's, when Richard Dawkins published "The Selfish Gene", which suggested that natural selection could act on the level of individual genes, as well as on entire organisms. This process is commonly known as Kin Selection, and may occur whenever the benefit to the recipient is greater than the cost to the donor multiplied by the degree of relationship between the two. Full siblings, for instance, share 50% of their genes, so we would expect altruism whenever the benefit to the recipient is at least twice as great as the cost (perhaps the sharing of food when one sibling is starving and the other well-fed).
In more intelligent, social animals (primarily mammals, and among these primarily primates) apparent altruism may occur between unrelated individuals through the process of reciprocity. In essence, this represents the exchange of a present benefit for the implicit guarantee of future repayment. Vampire bats are the archetypical example reciprocal altruism in action, as "friends" who offer blood to unsuccessful hunters are generally repaid when the circumstances are reversed.
It is generally assumed that altruism not falling into one of these categories represents and adventious extension of one of the two dominant mechanisms in evolutionary inappropriate circumstances, much as humans find must infant animals cute as a result of the selective pressure to care for our own young.

Answer 2

As the previous respondent points out, apparently selfless acts by humans are not usually quite as selfless as they at first appear.

Identifying how selfish an apparently selfless act is in humans is difficult as we exhibit a very complicated form of reciprocal altruism (helping another at cost to ourselves in the expectation that this may be repaid in the future). We are incredibly social animals with complex social interactions and the more complex a social group, the more likely this form of selfish act is.

Ofcourse, some humans also believe that good deeds in this life will be repaid in another. This can also lead to apparently selfless behaviour.

I don't think the concept of 'humanity' does stand up to scrutiny. There would seem to be abundant examples of altruism in animals, the motives for which are no more selfish than our own.

Ofcourse the 'selfish gene' theory shouldn't prevent us from engaging in altruistic behaviour even if our motives are selfish. You certainly see plenty of examples of humans acting with no compassion for their own or other species and if someone shows kindness I don't suggest we spend too much time wondering whether they expect it back or think they'll be repaid in the afterlife.

Answer 3

Not exactly what you are looking for but:

Place chimps in adjoining cages, and let them remain hungry for a while. Give only one chimp a small amount of food. The other chimp will beg, and the first will eventually (reluctantly) hand over some food. That it is reluctant is significant - it suggests that the chimp would prefer to eat the food itself, but feels the need to share.

Here is another example:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,288446,00.html

Answer 4

Giant sea turtles and dolphins have been rescuing drowning victims and taking them to the nearest land.

Answer 5

dogs fetch slippers

dolphins rescue sailors at sea

chimp saves boy who fell into his cage