A gene that encourages creatures containing copies of itself to collaborate with each other will thus prosper, even if that collaboration is detrimental to some of the collaborators, as long as the others involved in the transaction benefit more.
I asked Hugh Warwick, a leading hedgehog expert and author of the brilliant A Prickly Affair: The Charm Of The Hedgehog (Penguin), how best to encourage these creatures into our gardens.
One way to discourage snails is to encourage other garden creatures who snack on snails.
For example, encouraging plankton growth would encourage the growth of the creatures that feed on plankton, potentially disrupting the ocean food web.
A broader definition of intelligence won't just encourage us to look for creatures that we might otherwise have missed, Herzing says.
It's an interesting inconsistency of liberal American culture that in spite of happily organizing our lives around First World technology and creature comforts, we encourage youths to experience life in the Developing World firsthand.
Those neighbors are all black people; they encourage Daryl to deal with the creature, and he tells them not to worry, declaring, "Fairy lives don't matter today".
Now the organisation is hoping to build tunnels to help the creatures avoid traffic altogether, and to encourage drivers to look out for their fellow road users.
He calls the findings "eye opening" and expects they will encourage other researchers to start looking for multicellular creatures far beneath Earth's surface.
Their twist is to couch their mundane message of empowerment in terms of the traditional image of guardian angels, mystical creatures who descend from on high to watch over and encourage us in times of trial.
