![]() What is the point of a drone bee, doomed to remain childless and in the service of a totalitarian queen? Suddenly it made sense that, with the gene itself steering evolution, the fact that the drone shared its DNA with the queen meant that its servitude guarantees not the individual’s survival, but the endurance of the genes they share. ![]() ![]() This gene-centric view of evolution also began to explain one of the oddities of life on Earth – the behaviour of social insects. But in fact, Dawkins said, it was the gene itself that was trying to survive, and it just so happened that the best way for it to survive was in concert with other genes in the impermanent husk of an individual. Before this, it had been proposed that natural selection was honing the behaviour of living things to promote the continuance through time of the individual creature, or family, or group or species. The behaviour of all living things is in service of their genes hence, metaphorically, they are selfish. The idea was this: genes strive for immortality, and individuals, families, and species are merely vehicles in that quest. ![]()
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