Altruism

Altruism refers to a behaviour that is the opposite of egotism. Altruism is a set of actions taken by a person helping and promoting survival of other people without bringing the person any apparent advantage.

Particularly in social species, this behaviour is explained by sociobiology, that is, by the gain that the person achieves in terms of global selection value.

For example, in the case of an ant hill in which all of the ants are sterile (apart from the queen) but share the same genes, altruistic sacrifice of part of the colony saves the rest of the colony and allows the genes of the sacrificed ants to be transmitted.