Adoption and risk management in fish: how cichlids prevent their young from being eaten
Tuesday, March 19, 2013 - 09:30
in Psychology & Sociology
For a variety of reasons, many humans choose to adopt children. More surprisingly, adoption is fairly widespread in the animal kingdom, even though it would seem to counteract the basic premise of Darwin’s theory of evolution, which suggests that animals should raise as many of their own offspring as possible. Understanding the rationale for adoption has challenged theorists for generations. Scientists now describe a new approach to the problem.