More cool stuff

This is incredible. Compassion is a gene's way of helping itself. Because we naturally feel compassionate for family members, we help them before anything else. Because they are family, they share the gene and this helps the spread of the gene in the most direct way possible.
This happens all the time, just not in such raw form.
Think of about the plants animals eat. Have you ever wondered why the plants animals eat are 1. usually in great abundance in their natural habitat (undisturbed by humans) and (even more interesting) 2. are ideal for that animal's health.
This is absolutely crazy if you look at it blankly, but when you think into it, it begins to make sense in the same way compassion does.
Plants and the Animals which consume them have co-evolved for millions of years and have perfected every intricacy both in themselves and in their relationships with each other.
Anytime a co-evolutionary partnership like this occurs there are always two possibilities as to how it could have happened. Let me explain.
How is it that animals enjoy the most healthy food for them more than any other food in their environment? There are two ways it could have happened.
1. Some point in history, this animal gained a trait which made it use a common plant in it's habitat with optimum benefit. This does not just benefit the animal, but the plant as well. Because of this new trait, the animals which eat this plant which their body processes extraordinarily well will thrive and hence help the plant to spread and thrive and a relationship is formed which will last forever until outside circumstances change it.
2. Some point in history, a common plant in a specific area gained a trait which made it more healthy for a common animal species. The animal hence can live longer and it's population will thrive, helping this plant in the exact same way.

The extraordinary thing is that these two scenarios have opposite causes but their outcomes are exactly the same. Each evolutionary step provides a new relationship between two or more species which benefits both parties in numerous ways. Interspecies relationships like these are fool-proof evolutionary wonders. I focus much thought towards these interspecies anomalies. They fascinate me.

Compassion is an example of a totally different, yet equally magnificent, trait we find. The compassion we feel for family, the way cats will bathe each other, the way ant colonies work together... these are all very different anomalies. In these instances, organisms work together within their one species to thrive. These are self-serving traits. Yet, still, we find instances where these examples of seemingly self-serving instinct, do much to help other organisms. Why? In some cases it can be explained as simply as above, this trait which is on the surface self serving, helps the organism in a secondary way in that it helps another organism! Another relationship is found.

Our abundance of different species all working together is a wonder which we can hardly understand. Selfish as all organisms are, we still help each other without even knowing it, without even wanting it, because such is the nature of our evolutionary history.