Publisher's Synopsis
Cooperation is the fabric that keeps society together, but to what extent is such behaviour instinctive, and how much of it is a product of moral will? Could the secret of enhancing human cooperation lie in an investigation of the animal kingdom? In CHEATING AND MONKEYS CITIZEN BEES, evolution and animal behaviour expert Lee Dugatkin reports from the cutting edge of scientific research on the startlingly evolutionary truth about cooperation and how it works. He explains the four paths to cooperation which we share with animals: family dynamics, reciprocal transactions, mutual teamwork, and universal altruism.
Dugatkin illustrates his argument with remarkable examples of cooperation from the natural world: baby-sitting mongooses and squirrels who willingly martyr themselves to save relatives and fish who switch sexes in order to share reproductive duties. With these colourful insights into the natural world, Dugatkin shows that what comes naturally to animals can teach us about the instincts that underlie the complex web of human social networks.
