
Besides
the enormous amount of anecdotal evidence that animals behave altruistically,
both toward members of their own species and also to animals outside their
species, there is clinical evidence as well, such as the typically cruel
experiments in which monkeys were given food if they administered painful
shocks to other monkeys. Researchers found that the monkeys would rather go
hungry than shock other monkeys, especially if they had received shocks earlier
themselves. The researchers were surprised (and perhaps somewhat ashamed?) by
the monkeys’ altruism. Though it is our true nature, one wonders if we humans
would be so noble.![]()

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