Humans are full of surprises. If you watch
the news, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that humans are the worst
animals on two legs. We can be petty, selfish, mean, and violent. We wage wars,
pollute the environment, and oppress one another for financial gain. But every
so often something happens that allows us to glimpse the real nature of what it
means to be human, and the results are among the most beautiful things on the
planet.
Last
week, in Canada, a wildfire ripped through the Northern end of the province of
Alberta. Wildfires are a common occurrence in the boreal forest, but this
one was unique for a few reasons. First, it was early; the temperatures under
which the fire ignited were dry and incredibly warm (32 C compared to the
average daily high for early May of about 16 C). Second, wind and very low
humidity caused the fire to grow and move very quickly. Sometime on Tuesday,
the flames arrived at the city of Fort McMurray, home to over 80,000 people.
The fire ripped through neighbourhoods, destroying buildings and possessions
along the way. By Wednesday morning, over 1,600 buildings had burned and some
neighbourhoods lost 90% of houses. Shockingly, one thing that wasn’t lost was a
single human life.
The evacuation of Fort McMurray was nearly
as shocking as the fire that necessitated it. Nearly 100,000 people fled the
city peacefully and relatively safely. Even still, cars and trucks clogged the
only route out of the city as fire engulfed the forest all around. What made
this possible was a human trait that has puzzled scientists for years:
co-operation.
When the chips are down, as they were and
continue to be for the people of Fort McMurray, few animals come together as
comprehensively and effectively as humans do. As people ran out of gas on the
highway, others shared jerry-cans they had with them. As fire victims made
their way to shelters in Edmonton, Syrian
refugees, who had only landed in the
country months earlier with no possessions, gave anything they had to help.
Even the beer company Labatt’s shut down their brewery to can
drinking water for victims. Across Canada, tens of millions of dollars in aid have
been collected. How can a species with such a mean streak in one context, be so
generous in another?
There are many theories about human
altruism but they all boil down to the idea of selection. Most people are
familiar with Charles Darwin’s idea of natural selection, but on the face of
it, helping someone out seems to be counter-productive. If there are more
people around to compete for resources, logic suggests it would be harder for
each individual to survive. But, selection
also acts on groups, and those who work together stand a better chance of
survival in the long run, compared to groups made up of people who can’t stand
each other.
Some anthropologists believe that the human
tendency to help out strangers, whom we see as being part of our larger social
group, is what led to the development of our cultures and languages. As we
worked together, it became more and more useful to have ways to connect and
communicate with people we had never met before, for the good of the group.
Humans aren’t entirely alone on the
altruism front, however. New
research comparing us to other primates has shown that some species of
monkey are also willing to lend a hand to those in need. Researchers at the
University of Zurich in Switzerland compared several species of primate with
respect to their willingness to give food to other members of their same
species. They looked at 15 species in total, including marmosets and tamarins,
lemurs, spider monkeys, capuchin monkeys, macaques, chimps, and human children
ranging from 5 to 7 years old. What they found was that the species who were
most likely to give food to someone else were also the ones who engage in
something called cooperative breeding.
Cooperative
breeding is the idea that when a baby is born, many adult members of the
social group help to care for it, not just its parents. Animals that evolve the
tendency to offer free childcare tend to live in rough situations. When resources
become scarce, birds have been known to be cooperative breeders and the same is
thought to have happened to our human ancestors as they came out of the trees
in Africa and began life on the Savannah, where lions and their ilk made life
way more dangerous. The upshot of cooperative breeding is that adults don’t
have to wait until their babies are fully independent before having their next
brood, resulting in better reproductive success for everyone in the group.
The plains of Africa are a long way from
the boreal forest of Canada, but human cooperation appears to be geographically
transferable. The people of Fort McMurray have a long way to go to get back on
their feet, but at least they can know that their neighbours and millions of
years of social evolution have got their backs.
Anyone wishing to help the relief efforts
can donate to the Canadian
Red Cross. Our hearts are with the people of Fort McMurray during this
difficult time.
