Today, on my afternoon dogwalk I saw that hundreds of young swallows were gathering on the hill above the woods behind my house, swooping about, scooping up as many flies as they could -- because they're going to need them over the next week or two. These are small swallows, born only this year. Some of these swallows have probably come down from the north of England. They are, of course, preparing to migrate to Africa.

Their parents flew to Africa a week or two ago. Perhaps they are making sure that they will get the best nesting sites for themselves. But I'm weak on ornithology: perhaps they don't breed in Africa, only here, and don't need nesting sites. At all events, they've gone, and they left no instructions at all to their offspring about how to fly to Africa.

The young swallows will, of course, be doing what their genes will tell them to do. We're well able to understand that. But yet, there is still the most incredible resistance to the idea that humans, too, might have genes which predispose them strongly to certain sorts of behaviour. A few days ago when I posted an article on another list about the sense of fairness that capuchin monkeys possess -- almost certainly because of their genes -- it was treated very sarcastically by one respondent.

But, never mind, here is another piece about genetic dispositions to fairness. In us, probably exactly the same genes as in the capuchin monkey are the basis for caring for one another (particularly if we're closely related) but also as the basis for trusting people enough sufficiently to trade favours or goods with them. Mankind could never have started to trade, and thus to start his immensely complicated economic systems at least 75,000 years ago, unless he had an innate sense of trust and fairness.

Keith Hudson

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Play fair: your life may depend on it

Nicholas Wade

It may be comforting to assume one's children are imbued with a sense of morality at home, school or religious assembly. But it's also possible that the rudiments of ethical behavior are simply wired into their genes, and have little to do with improving advice from the adult world.

Researchers at Emory University reported last week that capuchin monkeys have a sense of justice, at least as applied to themselves. They trained monkeys to trade pebbles for food. If a monkey saw a researcher giving her neighbor a grape in return for a pebble, but she herself received only a slice of cucumber, she would signal her displeasure by slamming down the pebble instead of handing it over, or refusing to eat the cucumber.

If a sense of fairness exists in a capuchin monkey, it probably developed early in the primate line, and the genes that promote the behavior are likely to be present in people too. Grown-ups often spend considerable time coaxing young children to share. But such behavior may be innate, despite the fact that children often seem reluctant to engage in it.

In many circumstances, altruism makes good evolutionary sense. Vampire bats have irregular mealtimes because their sources of blood supply are not willing donors, yet they die if they don't eat for three days. So it makes sense to share excess blood with thirsty neighbors, hoping the favor will be returned.

The same issue probably faced our ancestors in hunter-gatherer days. The elephant a hunter killed wouldn't fit in the freezer even if he had one. So better to share it and collect a whole lot of i.o.u.'s than let the meat rot. If hunters with a propensity to share ended up siring more children than the hoarders, the genes for sharing would spread.

So perhaps morality is embedded in the genes. Perhaps we are born with original virtue and it's from our culture we learn depravity. A good enough excuse, anyway, if caught slumbering in Sunday school.

New York Times -- 22 September 2003

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