Cooperation
Many organisms other than apes, such as fish, birds, and insects exhibit cooperative behavior: teaching, helping, and self-sacrifice, and can coordinate to solve problems.
We had to not only cooperate to eat, we also readily need to learn other important life skills to be able continue this strategy and had to raise our children that couldn't survive without essential food.
The "pay-to-stay" theory suggests that individuals help others rear offspring in order to return the favor of the breeders allowing them to live on their land.
[13] Studies conducted on red wolves support previous researchers'[12] contention that helpers obtain both immediate and long-term gains from cooperative breeding.
These findings suggest that kin selection may not only benefit an individual in the long-term in terms of increased fitness but in the short-term as well through enhanced chance of survival.
[15] In their meta-analysis, researchers compiled data on kin selection as mediated by genetic relatedness in 18 species, including the Western bluebird, Pied kingfisher, Australian magpie, and Dwarf Mongoose.
They found that different species exhibited varying degrees of kin discrimination, with the largest frequencies occurring among those who have the most to gain from cooperative interactions.
In other words, individual components that appear to be "selfish" and independent work together to create a highly complex, greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts system.
[16] Examples: Understanding the mechanisms that create cooperating agents in a system is one of the most important and least well understood phenomena in nature, though there has not been a lack of effort.
Examples of that can be found in market trade, military wars, families, workplaces, schools and prisons, and more generally any institution or organization of which individuals are part (out of own choice, by law, or forced).
[18] Results from experimental economics show that humans often act more cooperatively than strict self-interest, modeled as the Nash Equilibrium, would seem to dictate.
[20][21] Playing the iterated version of the game leads to a cascade of brain signals that relate the speed with which players reciprocate cooperation at subsequent rounds.
