Morality is not the exclusive domain of Homo sapiens; there is significant cross-species evidence in the scientific literature that animals exhibit "pre-morality" or basic moral behaviors (i.e. those patterns of behavior that parallel central elements of human moral behavior).
Empathy, fairness, reciprocity and other moral behaviors preceded the emergence of human religions by millions of years (deWaal, 2013).
Many believe that our species exclusively receives morality from God or gods. Is that so?
Certainly this view is widely held. However, facts do not support this incorrect belief.
From scientists’ observations, we are beginning to realize that humanity, Homo sapiens, is just one species among multitudes that innately possess morality.[1][2] Consider the social interactions of non-human primates. More than 90 percent of these interactions are affiliative and cooperative, rather than competitive or divisive.[3]
Some other examples of moral comportment [4]:
- Diana monkeys help each other obtain food.
- A herd of elephants unlocks an enclosure gate to help imprisoned antelopes escape.
- A cat named Libby leads her elderly, deaf and blind dog friend Cashew away from obstacles and towards food.
- A rat in a cage refuses to push a lever for food when it sees that another rat is receiving an electric shock as a result.
As the noted ethologist Marc Bekoff remarks about humans, “We’re not the sole occupants of the moral arena.”[5]
Helping, cooperation, and caring are not traits exclusive to humans acquired by way of sacred texts or deities. Our nearest primate relatives, the chimpanzees (who share 98% of our genes), also exhibit these characteristics. Such qualities are central to a shared, evolved phylogenetic ancestry. They have been observed even in species on branches that are far away from us on the evolutionary tree.[6][7]
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Recently Added References
- Coyte, K.Z., Schluter, J. and Foster, K.R. (2015). The ecology of the microbiome- Networks, competition, and stability. Science 350 (626) 663-666.
- Oliveira, N. M., Martinez-Garcia, E., Xavier, J., Durham, W. M., Kolter, R., Kim, W., & Foster, K. R. (2015). Biofilm formation as a response to ecological competition. PLoS Biology, 13(7).
- Pande, S., Shitut, S., Freund, L., Westermann, M., Bertels, F., Colesie, C., ... & Kost, C. (2015). Metabolic cross-feeding via intercellular nanotubes among bacteria. Nature Communications, 6.
References
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- Burkart, J. M., Bruegger, R. K., & van Schaik, C. P. (2018). Evolutionary origins of morality: Insights from nonhuman primates. Frontiers in Sociology, 3, 17.
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- Crespi, B. J. (2001). The evolution of social behaviour in microorganisms. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 16(4), 178-183.
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- De Waal, F. B., Leimgruber, K., & Greenberg, A. R. (2008). Giving is self-rewarding for monkeys. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(36), 13685-13689.
- Engelmann, J. M., Clift, J. B., Herrmann, E., & Tomasello, M. (2017). Social disappointment explains chimpanzees' behaviour in the inequity aversion task. Proceedings of the Royal Society - B, 284(1861), 20171502.
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- Monsó, S., Benz-Schwarzburg, J., & Bremhorst, A. (2018). Animal morality: What it means and why it matters. The Journal of Ethics, 1-28.
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- Tomasello, Michael. (2018). Precís of a natural history of human morality. Philosophical Psychology, 31, 661-668.
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The studies linked on this page are accessible via the researchers' websites and other public domain sources. If not linked, those studies are only available via academic journals.
