The Good Show
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In this episode, a question that haunted Charles Darwin: if natural selection boils down to survival of the fittest, how do you explain why one creature might stick its neck out for another?
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Oh, wait, you're listening to Radio Lab from WNYC and NPR. All right. Okay. So let's just do the open. All right. Hey, I'm Jada Bomeron. I'm Robert Krollewich. This is Radio Lab. And today we're going to be talking. Well, let's do it this way. Which way? I was at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, a big gathering spot for cool people with new books. And that particular-- It is Richard Dawkins. Richard Dawkins. They like him. Don't make it so easy for him. I decided to begin. This is a real problem for a lot of people by quoting him to him. You write, I don't know if it's in this book or some other, the total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute, it takes me to compose this sentence. Thousands of animals are being eaten alive. Others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear. Others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites. Thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, disease. It must be so. If there's ever a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. Who? Darwin was worried by the same thing. I mean, Darwin recognized the total horror of the suffering in nature. It was one of the things that actually made him lose his faith. But he also realized that it's not just a fact that it happens. It's intrinsic to natural selection that it must happen. And when you look at a beautiful animal like a cheetah that appears to be beautifully designed for something, like a cheetah is amazingly well designed, apparently, for catching gazelles. And gazelles are amazingly well designed for escaping from cheetahs. But they are the end products of a sort of evolutionary arms race in which thousands, millions of animals have died, the carving of the shape of a cheetah or a gazelle has come about through millions of unsuccessful gazelles being caught, and the successful ones making it through, only to be caught later, probably, but after reproducing and passing on the genes that help them to escape. So the sheer number of deaths that lie behind the sculpting of these beautiful creatures is horrifying, and at the same time it's got a kind of savage beauty. Wow, why did you blame this, exactly? Well, because I was sitting there thinking, "I know the cheetahs chase and eat antelopes, but wasn't there a nice cheetah once?"
Transcription truncated.
In this episode, a question that haunted Charles Darwin: if natural selection boils down to survival of the fittest, how do you explain why one creature might stick its neck out for another?