Cooperative child-rearing has been key to human evolution (Image: Harvard University Press)
NOWHERE is the uniquely human cocktail of cooperation, tolerance, mind-reading and empathy more on display than when we are shoehorned together into a crowded airplane. We smile politely at people who bump into us, offer sympathetic nods to mothers of wailing babies, and offer our untouched dessert to the stranger in the adjacent seat.
After inviting us to reflect on this behaviour, points out just how odd it is. If we were travelling with a planeload of chimps, she says, “any one of us…
