In Chapter 5, Dawkins speaks on aggressive behavior. He argues that genes are selfish and survival machines are selfish as a result. The survival machine has instructions to survive as best as possible in its environment and other organisms are present within that environment. Aggressive behavior is a way to guard resources from other organisms. Dawkins brings up Lorenz here, who argues that animals fight to scare off competition and predators, not to kill. While this might seem altruistic, Dawkins argues that its actually just a better use of energy for the individual doing the fighting. If they don’t have to kill to survive, doing it would waste resources. Fighting is more efficient in this respect.
Dawkins thinks Maynard Smith, another scientist, does a better job of describing animal behavior from an evolutionary perspective than Lorenz. Smith believes there are Evolutionary Stable Strategies that increase an animal’s chance of survival. In this theory, there are two types of behaviors organisms can act upon: the “hawk” strategy in which organisms fight to kill or the “dove” strategy in which organisms fight to scare. This works as a pendulum and as time goes on the amount of animals who act one way or another changes from one side to another. When all organism act like doves, no one gets hurt but if an animal were to develop the hawk demeanor, they would be at an advantage. However, if all organisms acted like hawks, they would all get hurt and animals who developed the dove demeanor would be the only ones not getting hurt, giving them an advantage. With each generation, the pendulum swings. According to Smith, there are three attributes to behavior that will make it an ESS: size and strength, age difference, and chance. Bigger organisms will be an at advantage over small organisms. Older organisms will be an advantage over smaller organisms. Then, there are just lucky organisms who benefit from chance. According to Dawkins, these dominance relationships, which eventually develop into social hierarchies, develop to save everyone energy. An antelope who tries to fight with a lion attacking it rather than run is more likely to either die or lose energy. It conserves more energy and confers better survival to run.
In fact, Dawkins believes that most behaviors that seem altruistic are really just ESS that develop to conserve energy and resources for the individual. He claims that cannibalism doesn’t come about because amplification of this trait would reduce the fitness of the species and thereby reduce the fitness of the individual. If your kind doesn’t eat each other, then you have less predators. It isn’t altruistic, its selfish. This becomes tricky when it comes to family, because people who are related genetically tend to act altruistically towards each other. However, its not true altruism because the genes are just protecting copies of itself that are found in relatives of the survival shell.
When replicators create a good survival shell, it is hard for a new gene to make it into the mix and disrupt the equilibrium because it might change for the worst. Sometimes, a new gene makes it in and works out for the best. This is evolution.