Animals Like Us : Animal Adoption – Wildlife Documentary

Animals Like Us : Animal Adoption - Wildlife Documentary
Spread The Viralist



Altruism, an act that bestows a benefit on the recipient while conferring a cost to the actor, is one of the central paradoxes of evolution. In the wild, where only the fittest survive, adopting other animals’ offspring is not really in line with Darwin’s theory of evolution. And yet, amongst bees, dolphins, lions and several primate species, altruism may go as far as adoption. In the case of social insects, parent substitution was a flaw in Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection: the biologist noticed that non-reproductive insects who adopted and helped young ones, brought a large portion of genetic baggage from their parents. Darwin had to broaden his theory to the family group. For mammals, including men, what advantage is there in the act of adoption? In the years following the adoption, does the adopted individual contribute to the foster parents’ survival and vice versa? The controversy at the heart of this documentary continues to be debated in today’s scientific world. While raising these different questions, this documentary will study each case separately because each adoption behaviour has evolved independently forming its own pattern, its own benefit and even… its own disadvantages.

documentary made by Jacqueline Farmer

source

Recommended For You

About the Author: Best Documentary

28 Comments

  1. This documentary simplifies Darwin. He had lots of interesting thoughts about cooperation, altruism, and group selection. It was the Modern Synthesis which simplified everything down to selfish genes.

  2. Amazing documentary! And good call saving the best for last…you can't have a conversation about "altruism" in the animal kingdom without talking about dolphins and bonobos ☺ Boy, do I ? animals!!!

  3. What is also rather interesting is when you have as I did have a dairy cow adopt me as if I were her calf , She would come to me to lick me with were very rough tongue to from me and she would not let a dog near me . She would attack the dog if he came near , also I could not let children near when I brought the cows up to be milked… There was one rather interesting experience that a builder had when we had some major alterations made to the cowshed where the cows are milked day and night… During the day he started up the skill saw that made a foreign noise to this cow and she being about 200 or 300 metres from the shed she heard the noise and she came running down to the shed all upset because she thought I was being threatened… The builder was rather surprised to see this cow coming down to the she so agitated … I had other cows in the past also looked for me to walk me to the cow shed to be milked.

  4. The answer is simple; nature is not merely mechanical or "evolutionarily economic). It is, as everything in CREATION, based on the Quantum,whose basic principle that everything affects everything else that exsists,whether minutely or on a massive scale. Understood this way, the idea of fostering unrelated beings makes perfect sense. That is the Darwinian theory's blind spot.

  5. but wolves don't adopt slow growing animals like a human.

    we need to see an Indian wolf pack adopt an elephant calf
    good thing we can't apply this "females are naturaly inclined to liking babies" to humans. hell even saying that for these monkeys will be offensive to some

  6. I watched a video just Yesterday about these monkeys. One of the mothers abandons her baby and as another mother comes up after 20 mins of hearing this baby crying she adopts it!! Not only did she adopt it but treated it the same way she treated her own baby which was the same age! She had to carry two around and eat for two! ??❤️

  7. Adopting other species is common also for humans, when they adopt a dog or a cat – or whatever their choice may be. So that is a waste of energy?

  8. The human stepparent thing could be partly explained by the tendency for people with psychological problems to have more trouble with relationships. In order to have a stepparent, you need one parent who had a child and isn't partnered with that child's other parent, usually because the relationship broke down; and a person who is single and available at an age where many of their peers have children, or else willing to have a relationship with someone much older than them. All three categories of people are more likely than happily married people to have psychological issues, including issues linked to violence.

  9. Perhaps the problem is that we assume that Darwin was always right. We are all human and all are prone to mistakes (even those that are deemed genius). I don't feel that my adopting a puppy to raise and care for is considered a waste of time as the theory of evolution in species would suggest.

Comments are closed.