Reference no: EM133232195

Elephants sometimes act altruistically: they behave in a way that costs them some of their own fitness but that benefits others' fitness. One way to explain how altruistic behaviors evolve is to hypothesize that they are reciprocated. (N.b. We didn't talk about this hypothesis for altruism in class, but I'll explain it quickly here.) That is, I scratch your back now at a cost to me, but you scratch my back at some later point. This "reciprocal altruism" requires that animals remember who is who and who owes whom what, which we suppose elephants can do. An alternative explanation for altruism is kin selection (which we did talk about in class). These two hypotheses make different predictions about whom the altruism is directed toward, which lets you test between them. So how would you test between these hypotheses for the evolution of elephant altruism? What is/are the discriminating prediction(s)?