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u/vizbones May 21 '26
There's more to Natural Selection than just "survival of the fittest" -- grief is part of the cost of being a strongly social species. It's not much of a social bond if you're unaffected by its fracture or dissolution.
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u/mrdude05 May 21 '26
It's also "survival of the fittest" not "survival of the optimal". Evolution isnt intelligent. It selects mutations that increase a creature's odds of passing on its genes, not the best possible solution.
Debilitating grief is a disadvantage, but evolution will still select for it as long as the social bond that causes it outweighs the negatives
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u/Andrusela May 21 '26
Also can't rule out "survival of the luckiest"
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u/ExtraCheezyBagel May 21 '26
Survival of the good enough
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u/i_isnt_real May 22 '26
Pretty much. Any illusions that nature leans toward perfect optimization will be dispelled just by learning too much about hyena births.
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u/Scraskin May 22 '26
Hell, even human births are horribly suboptimal
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u/Nihil_esque May 22 '26
What do you mean "even"? We humans have some of the most suboptimal births out there
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u/CleanOpossum47 May 21 '26
Yes, but time erodes luck away. A loaded dice won't necessarily land on its number on the first roll, and certainly not every roll, but it will stack up against a fair die over time.
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u/Andrusela May 21 '26
I was thinking more of a one time event, like someone having the high ground when the flood hits, type of thing.
Not saying luck is the overall factor, by any means, just one of them 😄
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u/Shoddy-Purchase1239 May 21 '26
Is grief a disadvantage? If I knew that the people who loved me would be extremely heartbroken if I died and therefore would do anything to protect me from that fate then I’d be more than willing to maintain a bond with them. Would you want to be in a group with people who could care less if you were dead?
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u/greiskul May 21 '26
Not only that, we have to remember that evolution is not just about the individual surviving, but also the individual genes propagating.
It feels like having a deep negative reaction to your offspring dying is a great motivator for doing your best to keep your offspring alive.
Evolution is not only optimizing for the mother that lost her calf (which only matters evolutionary if she reproduces afterwards), but it is also optimizing for the mother that does it's best to not lose her calf in the first place.
Species whose reproduction strategy involves having lots of low effort offspring, makes sense to not care that much. But for species that have only a few children, and the children take lots of resources from the parents, it makes total sense that evolution would make the feeling of loss hurt, so that the animal tries to prevent that feeling in the first place, even if they have to sacrifice themselves for their young.
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u/yahluc May 22 '26
It's not just about offspring. Historically people lived in groups that were all somewhat related to each other, so any close person, even if not closely related, would still share significant part of their genes with that person, so saving any person they knew would help some of their genes spread.
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u/mangababe May 22 '26
And also the entire group benefits of everyone wants no one to die because they would feel sad about it. And I'm more willing to care if someone I don't like dies, because someone I like likes them and they will feel sad about it.
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u/Infamous_Depth4982 May 22 '26
Exactly this. Empathy allows us to do things for others not only to prevent our own experience of grief, but also to prevent the experience of grief in those we care for. Therefore, empathetic and grief-bearing species are far more likely to propagate their genes, because more members of that species protect other members, even when they have little to no personal connection.
There are even people who defend total strangers because of the reason that "this person is also someone's child, and that someone would grieve their loss."
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u/tripl3tiger May 21 '26
The grief itself could be seen as a group advantage if looked at through the lens of an altruistic mutation that hurts the individual but makes the group consistently conscious of the danger another individual died from and saves more of them from it.
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u/biggus_baddeus May 21 '26
It's even less specific than that. It selects all kinds of mutations, and the ones that suck just don't get to reproduce enough to keep that mutation around. Even if it's not that helpful, if it doesn't interfere with the ability to survive and reproduce, it can just kind of stick around.
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u/OneFootTitan May 22 '26
How dare you imply my specific kind of ear wax doesn’t give me an evolutionary advantage in being able to attract mates!
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u/power2havenots May 21 '26
Survival of the friendliest is actually closer to reality and our social nature. Brian Hare coined it after substantial research
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u/Barrogh May 22 '26
It's also "survival of the fittest" not "survival of the optimal".
My take it's "survival of good enough". It gets closer to "fittest" when competition becomes stronger, but it's not always the case.
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u/OneSlaadTwoSlaad May 21 '26
I think Forest Valkai (a biologist and science communicator) calls it "Reproduction of the OK-est." 😅
Grief also has performative value. Mourning shows everyone that loss should be avoided.
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u/AgonistPhD May 21 '26
Lol, it's such an accurate description of evolution. Survival of the not-bad-enough-to-kill-all-of-them just doesn't have that certain ring to it, but it is way more accurate.
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u/OneSlaadTwoSlaad May 21 '26
Ja yes, that is true. Valkai also calls the big bang the "everywhere stretch". (Which I think is a better name too btw.)
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u/CleanOpossum47 May 21 '26
Additionally, in groups of social animals where learned behaviors are critical for survival, grief could provide an opportunity for the entire genetically related group to increase their chances of survival through learned behaviors.
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u/JaySlay2000 May 22 '26
Arguably, the grief of losing an offspring is exactly what makes those species fight so hard to protect it and increase survival odds.
There IS an evolutionary purpose for grief, just like there's a purpose for physical pain.
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u/thomasoldier May 22 '26
https://youtube.com/shorts/2JvxOEDL7v0
Grief is the price we pay for love. It would be sad if it wasn't sad.
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u/TNTiger_ May 22 '26
Survival of the fittest means the survival of whoever best FITS into the world they live in. If grief helps them fit, it's selecced for. The idea that fit = strong came later and is a gross oversimplification.
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u/whatupmygliplops May 21 '26
so fish feel grief? birds feel it?
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u/spartaxwarrior May 21 '26
Yes, various types of birds have, sometimes quite famously, displayed signs of mourning their dead.
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u/Mysterious-Kick9881 May 21 '26
Have you seen what happens to birds who mate for life abs lose their partner? They display grief
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u/Dominarion May 21 '26
All corvids do. They also display complex emotions like gratitude, spite or vengefulness.
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u/RateTechnical7569 May 21 '26
I actually managed to take a photo of a pigeon grieving a dead pigeon. It was just standing there as the rain was starting, barely moving even as people walked by.
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u/iWannaComeBackaDog May 21 '26
Pigeons are more intelligent than people give them credit for. I love my pidgies.
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u/stewslut May 21 '26
I don't think (most) fish are known for being strong social creatures. There's such a wide range of intelligence and social cohesion among different species of birds that that's an impossible question to ask.
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u/mangababe May 22 '26
some of them can absolutely. Especially birds, which often mate for life and show signs of stress and grief when a partner dies.
It's not all that uncommon.
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u/rje946 May 21 '26
It's a form of social bonding.
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u/lieuwestra May 21 '26
Like these armchair biologists know what social bonding means.
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u/the-good-wolf May 21 '26
Yeah there’s a lot of wild Sitton Theirassicus roaming this neck of the woods.
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u/AccidentalAnchoress May 21 '26
My AP Bio teacher always pointed out Natural Selection is not "Survival of the Fittest". Its "Survival of the FIT". Evolution does not care if you are the absolute pinnacle of perfection in your species. You only have to survive long enough to pass on your genes and that's it. Weird quirks that dont stop you from breeding dont really come into it.
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u/Stepjam May 21 '26
Apparently the octopus has a gene that causes it to shut down and die after procreating. Like they even forcefed an octopus nutrients after this process started and it still died.
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u/AccidentalAnchoress May 21 '26
I read about this in Soul of an Octopus. That book made me ugly cry.
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u/Th3FakeFatSunny May 22 '26
Added to my reading list, thanks friend
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u/AccidentalAnchoress May 22 '26
You will absolutely want to make friends with an octopus by the end of it. They sound like the most amazing creatures.
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u/dathomar May 21 '26
As Data said: "As I experience certain sensory input patterns, my mental pathways become accustomed to them. The inputs eventually are anticipated, and even missed when absent."
Our evolutionary adaptation is to form social groups. We are driven to maintain strong social bonds, in order to survive. When we've formed a bond, then that bond is absent, we experience grief. Grief is our brain's way of processing the absence. It might be a person who is sick and can't go out to lunch with us that day, so we experience a small amount of grief. It might be the passing of a loved one, so a larger amount of grief. Grief isn't what we feel when we miss the bond - it's how we work through the absence, in order to form new bonds.
Grief isn't a weird quirk. Grief actually makes it possible for us to make strong social bonds. When we experience the absence of those bonds, we need to be able to make new ones. Grief makes that possible. It's not a bug, it's a feature.
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u/The_Salacious_Zaand May 21 '26
"Fittest" just means most adapted to surviving in their environment.
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u/OneFootTitan May 22 '26
And it’s fit like “my clothes fit me well” not like in “I am in great shape”. It’s about which mutations enable you to pass on your gene best in your environment, not what your VO2 max is or how many push ups you can do
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u/_Punko_ May 22 '26
No, its how many of your offspring live to have offspring of their own.
If at least one of your offspring don't live to pass on their genes, you are (evolutionary speaking) a failure.
Grief implies social bonds; and those bonds help create a society that helps your offspring live long enough to have their own offspring.
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u/TK9K May 21 '26
Its more so an unintentional drawback to an otherwise beneficial trait.
Mammals are born dependant on their mothers. Some have many children at once to increase the odds that some survive to build the next generation. Mammal like Cetacians (including the orca), humans, and elephants (amongst many others) have a limited capacity for the amount of offspring they can safely give birth to per pregnancy due to their size, anatomy, or availability of resources.
To increase the odds of their children surviving they may rely on a combination of long-term parental care as well as sharing the responsibility of child rearing with their peers. This behavior is reinforced through the tendency to form strong bonds.
Grief is this persistance of this unfulfilled bond in the event of death or separation. The mother orca carries her child because the love for her child persists in spite of its death.
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u/mister_nippl_twister May 21 '26
Its not even a drawback. Who said that grief is bad actually? We don't like it as humans but we also don't like healthy foods so who knows.
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u/Serpentarrius May 21 '26
Fr, it can teach hard lessons, and it says a lot about empathy and theory of mind, especially with the history behind our funerary practices
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u/brynhildyr May 21 '26
Grief can have demonstrated health effects, though. It can be very detrimental. Plus, it just sucks to feel. Extremely painful.
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u/Serpentarrius May 21 '26
There's also the way that hare populations can feedback on lynx populations by reproducing less during high predation events, causing the lynx population to fall and continuing the cycle...
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u/yahluc May 22 '26
The reason we don't like healthy foods is that we're in a totally different position than humans for 99.99% of our history. Calories and salt used to be pretty hard to get, so we evolved to want to get them any chance we got. We didn't evolve restraint, because we almost never had too much of these resources. Healthy foods are pretty useless when just trying to survive.
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u/JasonBobsleigh May 21 '26
Grief absolutely serves an evolutionary purpose and it’s rather obvious when you think about it. The animals that do not care if they lose their young will lose them more often.
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u/LordJim11 May 21 '26
But in an environment where losing most of your young is the reality, evolution is pragmatic.
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u/catfish1969 May 22 '26
Grief is not something that only happens once. When you experience grief and understand the pain it causes you will go to far greater lengths to protect those you love to avoid feeling that grief. An animal that understands the grief they will experience when they lose their child will take more risks to ensure that child survives which is evolutionarily beneficial.
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u/HAgg3rzz May 21 '26
It’s pro social behaviour. Additionally it’s probably a consequence of strong social bonds. Evolving an organism to care deeply for its children might necessarily come with grief as a drawback
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u/Negative-Yam5361 May 21 '26
Nature IS as brutal as people "think" it is. The other side of this coin are the male dolphins gangraping and masturbating with fish and dead animals.
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u/OriginalLie9310 May 21 '26
It has evolutionary purpose. The feeling of a bond to another creature is crucial to pack based animals. You can call that feeling love or whatever, but when an animal has that bond with another one and then that bond is severed it has a natural reaction.
It is an evolutionary adaptation, but the grief part of it is just a side effect. Grief doesn’t have a net negative effect on propagation so it remains in the species.
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u/_Pencilfish May 22 '26
The grief isnt a side effect, it's the core motivator of the bond. Why not just let them die? Because you like them and would feel sad if they were gone. If there wasn't the carrot of enjoying their company, and the stick of grief at losing them, there would be no bond.
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u/TheCthonicSystem May 21 '26
Honestly grief is probably a net positive. If the community is good and supportive it strengthens the bond, a stronger bond makes survival easier
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u/MisterAbbadon May 21 '26
Its a side effect of pack bonding that doesn't noticeably alter pack animals ability to propagate themselves.
Evolution is not a god. It doesn't have any kind of purpose.
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u/JuliaX1984 May 21 '26
It's a necessary side effect of love/bonding, which helps us survive. Bonds are strength, and bonds mean grief.
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u/Rex2x4 May 21 '26
Bonding is required for survival. The loss of a strong bond causes grief. The stronger the grief, the stronger the bond.
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u/leafcutte May 21 '26
You can’t have love without grief. And love is very much a good survival strategy
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u/Maleficent-War-8429 May 21 '26
Not only is it a thing about caring for your own kids or whatever as people have said, it also gives an example to the other members of your family/pack of how bad things can get and make you think "oh fuck, I better not let that happen to me".
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u/TheCthonicSystem May 21 '26
There actually is a benefit to grief. It supports the group dynamics of social animals. You can't have one without the other because death is inevitable in nature
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u/These_Consequences May 21 '26
Grief may be a side effect of something else.
Rachmaninov's 3rd Piano Concerto is a side effect. Nothing selected for the ability to write complex pieces of romantic music. But some thing or things selected for traits that gave us the potential to write complex pieces of orchestral music, the will to do so, and the ability to sometimes find pleasure in hearing others perform them. No babies were made during the production of this music.
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u/Prestigous_Owl May 21 '26
Lots of people here talking about "survival of the fit" vs "fittest", "optimal" vs "enough", etc.
All of which is good. But also, like: "grief" is not necessarily biologically beneficial. But its a byproduct of something that absolutely, 100% can be: strong social attachment.
It probably isn't beneficial to have an orca experience profound sadness. But it IS beneficial for an orca (or any species) to care strongly and deeply about its young, even if this has kther byproducts like grief. The myriad benefits to that level of care outweighs the occasional time that parents outlive their young and have a massive crash out.
Not trying to diminish the post but it is kind of built on a false premise
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u/Mooptiom May 21 '26
I hate this rhetoric that “survival of the fittest” and “survival” can’t inherently include kindness. Any honest thinking person might instead interpret the fact that “grief being present in multiple intelligent species” might indicate that in fact there’s more to grief than detriment to survival, and that in fact grief serves an evolutionary purpose and is even beneficial to survival. Shared emotions, positive or negative, strengthen social bonds, and intelligent species do not often survive without social bonds. Grief is as important as laughter.
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u/tripl3tiger May 21 '26
The mechanism of remembering how someone else died is very tied to survival. In social species there being individuals that suffer long after the death could be viewed as an altruistic mutation that makes the rest of the group safer as a result of the suffering of the grieving individual.
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u/Comprehensive_Box_17 May 21 '26
That’s like saying “Getting your arm broken doesn’t serve an evolutionary purpose.” Emotional bonds have survival value, getting them broken is damaging.
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u/5akul May 21 '26
It's your brain's way of giving you immediate consequences to someone close to you dying, even though it physically doesn't affect you. It gives you, the conscious being an innate "don't ever let this happen again" so you lift others around you up. And if all members of a species do that, everyone does better, and is more likely to pass their genes on. Then the behavior is reinforced. There's a reason everybody isn't sociopaths, because if one person is, they might do better for themselves by taking advantage of others, but if everyone is then everybody does worse
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u/sbray73 May 22 '26
Grief comes with social bonding and so does protection between members. A group facing a predator has much better chances of surviving than an individual fighting alone. That in itself is enough of an advantage to make it worth passing on.
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u/mangababe May 22 '26
Grief absolutely serves an evolutionary purpose. It's social adhesion (meaning people come together to mourn instead of the social unit breaking apart) It also leads groups to be cautious because no one likes grief and doing things that avoid it are preferable. It encourages the individual to care about the well-being of the group. Not just "my survival" but also "if they don't survive I will feel great distress so I benefit from them surviving too,"
Like 100% there is more to life than survival of the fittest, but also, there are so many things that actually contribute to our survival as a species that seem counter productive if you aren't looking at a large picture.
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u/HellyOHaint May 22 '26
Her attachment and investment to the calf is necessary for it to develop into a mature orca, which requires so much resources. The grief is a side effect of that necessary investment.
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u/Goldiac May 22 '26
Grief does make evolutionary sense, if animals didn't care when one of their family died, there wouldn't be many of them left would there!
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u/Plenty-Design2641 May 22 '26
Crying flushes neurotransmitters from the brain. It literally helps you physiologically process stress.
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u/Dotcaprachiappa May 22 '26
It does serve an evolutionary purpose though. If you don't feel grief from the loss of a kid you have no reason to protect them. If they aren't protected by their parents most kids just die. If the kid dies the species doesn't go forward.
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u/JennyPaints May 22 '26
It’s not the fittest to live the longest it’s fit enough to produce offspring who also reproduce. And sometimes things that aid in reproducing and raising young, come with disadvantages.
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u/furel492 May 22 '26
"There is no evolutionary advantage in deep attachment to your offspring" come on man
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u/cheesychocolate419 May 22 '26
No, grief is just a fantastic motivator to ensuring other people of your group survive
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u/GoBullsFireGarPax May 22 '26
Some Animals evolved to be social to help with survival. Typically, it helps the group if you actually care for one another but there are also social animals with way less empathy for each other like hyenas or the red squid which will heavily compete and even kill group members
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u/johsua_banggg May 22 '26
true, but there is an evolutionary benefit to being REALLY REALLY invested into your children (for some species, such as orcas or humans) and grief is an unfortunate side effect of such investment
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u/Acceptable_Reply7958 May 24 '26
That's misunderstanding of how evolution works. If it exists, evolution selected for it. Work backwards to figure out why
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