Frans De Waal: moral behavior in animals

Behavior studies and experiments show that
1) animals cooperate for common goals
2) partners are willing to extend favors (cooperate even when their goals may not match during that moment)
3) animals return favors
4) animals reconcile after fights (because social harmony is very important in the long term)
5) animals may cheat during acts of cooperation
6) animals understand and expect similar rewards for similar actions

Cooking and human evolution

Some cool facts that I learned from the documentary: "Did cooking make us human?"

Mice on the same amount of cooked yam traveled (further on their energy wheels) than their compatriots on raw yam and did not lose any weight.

Heating up starch-based foods allows for starch molecules to be released which aids digestion which gaves us more energy for survival and reproduction. We could then cut down on the size of our guts (since cooked food can be digested at 1/4 the energy cost) which allowed us more energy to fuel our huge brains (intelligience).

There have been bone remains which show evidence of a process of cutting (with stone tools) meat off it and some bone remains were both burnt and had cut marks at the Wonderwerk caves (excavation sites of Homo Erectus) and date back 1 million years ago.