Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Selfish Gene, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Gene’s Eye View of Evolution
Selfishness, Altruism, and Cooperation
Culture and Memes
The Unit of Evolution
Summary
Analysis
Dawkins has considered aggressive, parental, and sexual behaviors among survival machines. Now, he wants to address social insects, understand why animals live in groups, and try to make sense of reciprocal altruism, meaning the principle of “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”
Dawkins wants to cover as many aspects of animal behavior for as many species as possible, to show that in each case, the selfish gene explanation fits. He thinks this will make his view more compelling to the reader.
Themes
Hunting in a group makes good “selfish” sense, since it makes catching prey easier. Dawkins borrows another explanation from Hamilton, who thinks that running as a herd also has selfish motivations. Animals on the edge of a herd are more likely to get eaten by predators. It’s a good “selfish” strategy for animals to clump into herds and try to get in the middle to protect themselves from predators.
Dawkins argues that animals tend to function in groups because it makes it easier to catch prey, or escape from predators, which keeps the individuals in a group alive, and their genes in the gene pool. He implies that just because animals often function in groups, it doesn’t mean the group is evolving as a unit.
Themes
Birds sometimes call to warn other birds there’s a predator nearby. This seems problematic, because it puts the calling bird at greater risk of being eaten. It’s been such a problem for Darwin’s theory of evolution that scientists have thought up all sorts crazy explanations for bird alarm calls, including Trivers who gives five different explanations. It’s likely, for example, that nearby birds are related, so birds protect their genes (in their relatives) when they sound alarms, keeping that trait in the gene pool.
Bird calls that warn about nearby predators make sense for group selectionists: the individual bird altruistically puts herself at risk of being eaten so the others can survive. It’s harder to make sense of this behavior from the gene’s eye view, which is why so many scientists have tried. As he indicates elsewhere, Dawkins says there are multiple explanations with the selfish gene at the center, just in case the reader takes issue with any of his specific examples.
Themes
Dawkins offers two explanations of his own. The noise of nearby birds might attract a predator even if one bird is quiet. So, perhaps the calling bird is selfishly trying to warn others to keep quiet. Also, if a bird just flies away when spotting a predator, he actually stands out more as a lone (and therefore vulnerable) bird. Sounding an alarm might be a way to get the whole flock to fly away, keeping the calling bird safely in the middle of the flock, and far from the predator. Dawkins concludes that warning calls have selfish motivations.
Dawkins gives two possible reasons for why birds sound alarm calls, to show that in both cases, the behavior actually helps the individual bird (and their genes) survive, even though it looks like the behavior puts them at individual risk. He implies that once again, there’s no altruism in play here, despite explanations that group selectionists might give.
Themes
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It’s harder to explain what genetic payoffs there might be for gazelles who “stot” (bounce) to warn about predators, but draw attention to themselves in the act. Ardrey thinks this is altruism for the good of the group, but Zahavi disagrees. Zahavi thinks stotting warns predators that the gazelle is so fit and strong that she can stot around and still not get caught.
Dawkins addresses the similar case of gazelles who stot when predators are nearby, despite this action slowing them down. Once again, theorists like Zahavi suggest that selfish genes and not altruism can provide a plausible explanation.
Themes
“Kamikaze” bees die when stinging, which looks on the surface like altruism for the good of the colony, but Dawkins disagrees. Most bees in a colony are sterile, and only sterile bees sting, so there’s no genetic loss involved. In fact, he thinks the colony acts more like one individual. It seems to have collective consciousness, and a communal stomach, for example. Dawkins thinks the queen represents reproductive cells, and worker bees function as organs like the heart, muscles, liver, and so on. He speculates that the death of a sterile bee is like a tree losing a leaf.
It’s a bit more challenging to show that bees who die when they sting are selfish, since they definitely die at the expense of others in their group. Dawkins argues that an individual bee isn’t a survival machine—rather, a whole colony collectively functions as one survival machine. A “kamikaze” bee’s death is therefore analogous to losing a non-reproductive part of one’s body, such as an arm. As long as the reproductive organs (here, the queen) still function, all the genes in the survival machine (colony) will keep replicating.
Themes
Another way to think about social insects is to invoke the “bearing” and “caring” dichotomy. Reproductive insects in a colony are “bearers,” and worker insects are “carers.” Since they are all genetically related, this isn’t altruistic behavior, but selfish behavior. This division of labor keeps all their genes in the gene pool. Hamilton discovered that “the Hymenoptera” (insects including ants, bees, and wasps) determine sex differently. Unfertilized eggs become male worker bees, meaning they actually share all of their genes with the queen and her offspring, so from a genetic perspective, protecting the reproductive bees is better than protecting themselves.
Similarly, when worker insects perform a lot of labor in the colony, it’s for the purpose of keeping the queen alive and reproducing. The workers don’t act altruistic. Rather, they do what’s in the best interest of their genes, which are replicated as long as the reproducing insects survive. Since worker bees (males) have all of their genes in common with the reproductive bees (females), helping the females focus on reproducing actually helps their genes the most.
Themes
Inspired by Fisher’s research, Trivers and Hare calculated ideal sex ratios in hymenopteran colonies. There is a potential conflict of interest because workers benefit from having more female (reproductive) insects in the colony to pass on their genes, but the queen benefits from having equal males and females, some to reproduce, and some to keep the colony (and the reproductive bees) fed and protected. In ants, the workers would win out, except ants often take unknowing slaves into their colonies. The adaptive strategies among “slave-making” queens and “slave-taking” queens play out such that reproductive ratios end up closer to what is optimal for the queen: equal males and females.
Conflicts of interests within insect colonies—say, over sex ratios—don’t imply that worker ants give up their preferred ratios to be altruistic toward the queen. In ants, for example, some insects get stolen and taken to other colonies as slaves. When the behavioral strategies of all the insects involved are factored in, equal sex ratios become evolutionarily stable states, meaning that equal sex ratios persist because they’re in the best interest of the genes involved.
Themes
Dawkins thinks an art farm (or hymenopteran farm) functions like a gene farm. The queen is farmed for her eggs, and the whole colony is organized to facilitate genes being passed on, packaged in reproductive ants.
Dawkins imagines a hymenopteran colony functions like a single farm or factory, oriented toward producing one product: their genes. He uses this metaphor to help the reader think of the colony as a single survival machine operated by selfish genes, rather than a group containing some altruistic individuals.
Themes
Dawkins starts thinking about symbiotic relationships in the natural world. Many ants feed fungi in order to later farm them, for example. They also milk aphids while protecting them from predators. Lichens are “double organisms”—an intimate symbiosis between algae and fungi. The relationship is so close that lichens seem like individual plants. Humans also contain tiny bacteria called mitochondria. Without mitochondria, we would die. And without us, mitochondria would die. Similarly, viruses are parasitic replicators (DNA surrounded by protein) that have bypassed the need to be transferred through reproductive organs. They just hop around from body to body.
Dawkins turns to symbiotic relationships in nature, which he hasn’t addressed yet. He wants to show that for cases of interspecies cooperation—such as between bacteria and humans, or ants and fungi—the same explanation always applies: groups are not evolving, and there’s no altruism in play. Rather, genes are competing in a selfish game of survival, and the ones that win out in natural selection explain all behaviors that are observable in the natural world.
Themes
Symbiotic relationships, or “associations of mutual benefit” evolve if each partner gets more out the relationship than they put in. Group selection theorists would consider cooperation between species separately from cooperation within species, but Dawkins thinks there’s no need for that. He wonders if reciprocal altruism (for example, scratching each other’s backs to get rid of parasites) has selfish motivations as well. Darwin (and later Williams) thought that reciprocal altruism could evolve in populations that were able to recognize and remember each other.
Dawkins thinks that both symbiotic relationships (cooperation between species) and reciprocal altruism (cooperation within a species) make sense when explained from the gene’s eye view: they happen because the genes for those behaviors has won out in natural selection, especially when one factors in the ability to recognize and remember other individuals. Dawkins thinks it’s a strength of his view that unlike group selectionists, he doesn’t need many different explanations to account for a variety of animal behaviors.
Themes
Trivers looked at this puzzle too, and used the Prisoner’s Dilemma from game theory (the mathematics of strategic interactions) to solve it in 1971. Trivers worked out that in a population with “suckers” (who always pick parasites off others), “cheats” (who accept help but don’t reciprocate), and “grudgers” (who pick parasites off but remember cheaters and don’t help them next time around). Depending on the starting ratio of the population, the group will evolve to be nearly all cheats (and eventually shrink in numbers or die out), or mostly grudgers. Both are evolutionarily stable strategies.
The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a theoretical example that calculates the odds of two individuals cooperating with each other when they don’t know what the other person will do. Both individuals benefit from cooperating. However, it’s be a safer bet to be selfish, because the individual loses out the most when they cooperate, but the other person doesn’t (or, they act like a “sucker”).
Themes
Trivers also looked at “cleaner-fish,” who have a symbiotic relationship with larger fish. Cleaner fish get their food by nibbling parasites off large fish, and large fish in turn get cleaned. This also seems like reciprocal altruism. The large fish could eat the cleaner fish after they’ve been cleaned but they don’t. Similarly, the cleaner-fish could take bites out of the large fish and swim away, but on the whole, they don’t either. Dawkins suggests that because symbiotic cleaning happens at fixed places in the ocean for each fish species, reciprocal altruism based on some form of recognition might have evolved.
Dawkins describes another example of cooperation among fish to show that “reciprocal altruism” makes good selfish sense. The cleaners and the large fish aren’t nice just for the sake of it. Rather, the most stable strategy arises when the fish don’t exploit each other. If one side cheats, the exploited fish will likely remember and refuse to participate in the future, which means that both lose out: one on the mutual benefit of easy access to food, and the other on easy access to parasite removal.
Themes
Trivers also thought that feelings like sympathy, guilt, envy, and gratitude evolved to help humans cheat and detect cheats. Dawkins decides to let the reader speculate about that one on their own.
Trivers implies that many human emotions exist because they help humans to feel strongly about the people who exploit them. Trivers implies that even humans (who understand the concept of altruism) play the “grudger” strategy. They tend to be nice at first, but not again if the kindness is not reciprocated.
Themes
