Hacker News Reader

The same could be said about humans' behavior toward their domestic pets, which are to a large degree bred to retain the traits of infant wild animals.

View on HN

Not sure what you mean. I didn't mean to undermine dolphins; they are highly intelligent species and definitely altruistic. The point is simply that they don't save a drowning human because they care about a random drowning mammal, but because they mistake it to a drowning dolphin because we both have lungs. Not sure that has anything to do with what you said.

Oh I just meant domestic pets appeal to the same parts of the human brain that human infants do, in part because humans have bred domestic pets to retain infantile traits into adulthood. For example, an adult dog retains most of the personality traits of a baby wolf, whereas an adult wolf does not.

This is somewhat analogous to your explanation of dolphins acting altruistically toward humans because we resemble their young when struggling in the water.

In the same way, it would be very hard for most of us to ignore a lost crying puppy wandering down the street.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com