The Hominid Post is an independent publication about human behavior, evolutionary anthropology, human behavioral ecology, and cultural evolution. About The Hominid Post
A worker honeybee may spend her life gathering food, regulating the temperature of the hive, feeding larvae, or defending the colony. She usually produces no offspring of her own. An ant may follow a similar path, working within a colony containing thousands—or, in some species, millions—of individuals organized around a reproductive queen.
From an individual perspective, this appears puzzling. Natural selection depends on reproduction. Why would evolution produce animals that surrender their own reproductive opportunities and devote their lives to others?
This was one of the central questions behind Edward O. Wilson's sociobiology: the systematic study of the biological foundations of social behavior. It also connects with the evolutionary world described by Matt Ridley in The Red Queen, where organisms must continually adapt because parasites, competitors, mates, and rivals are adapting around them.
Bees and ants show how far cooperation can evolve. Humans reveal something more complicated: cooperation among individuals who remain reproductively independent, cognitively flexible, culturally diverse, and frequently divided over who deserves help.
Eusociality: A form of social organization involving cooperative care of young, overlapping generations, and a reproductive division of labor.
Sociobiology: The study of social behavior through evolutionary theory, ecology, genetics, and comparative biology.
Inclusive fitness: An organism's genetic contribution through its own reproduction and through effects on the reproduction of genetically related individuals.
Reciprocal altruism: Cooperation in which one individual provides a benefit with the possibility of receiving help later.
August 12, 2026
U.S. consumer prices rose 0.1% in July and 3.4% over 12 months. Real average hourly earnings fell 0.1% during July and 0.2% over 12 months -- nominal pay growth did not translate into higher purchasing power.
BLS, August 12An OECD brief argues cardiovascular screening programs must improve access, target high-risk groups, strengthen data infrastructure, and connect results with coordinated follow-up. Cardiovascular disease causes one in three EU deaths and costs an estimated €282 billion annually.
OECD, August 11A National Academy of Medicine workshop is examining AI-biology governance across the full capability chain -- vaccines, treatments, and outbreak detection alongside risks from model development, biological design, synthesis, access, and deployment.
National Academy of Medicine, August 11--12A University of Florida workshop at ACM KDD is developing evaluation approaches for AI that recommends action -- based on causal reasoning, counterfactuals, calibrated uncertainty, and safety constraints. A model can predict observations well while making invalid treatment recommendations.
University of Florida / ACM KDD, August 10The U.S. Election Assistance Commission marked National Poll Worker Recruitment Day and released customizable recruitment resources. The practical issue is whether polling places have enough trained people to operate reliably.
U.S. Election Assistance Commission, August 11A 32-year USDA Forest Service study found northeastern trees are using water more efficiently while foliar nitrogen declined strongly after early-2000s peaks. Rising CO₂ and falling nitrogen deposition are plausible joint drivers, but the study cannot separate them.
USDA Forest Service, 2026Three Stanford Libraries exhibitions examine transit cartography and spatial identity, East Asian printing, and text machines from 1883 to 2026 -- showing how libraries can make technical media legible as social history.
Stanford Libraries, August 12The World Food Programme projects 6.5 million people in Somalia will face crisis-level hunger or worse in 2026, including 1.84 million children with acute malnutrition. WFP says it needs $131 million through October and can currently reach only one in ten people in need.
World Food Programme, August 12The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities opened its 35th session on August 12. The independent expert body monitors how states implement the disability-rights convention; its first country review is Qatar.
United Nations, August 12NASA-supported teams are using a WB-57 aircraft and scientific balloons during today's total solar eclipse -- 80 balloon launches in Iceland and six in Spain -- to measure how the atmosphere and ozone respond to abrupt darkness.
NASA, August 12A new synthesis argues that prolonged childhood may have preceded major brain expansion. Cooperative care may have made extended development viable before encephalization -- not after. The proposed causal order is a synthesis to be tested, not a settled chronology.
Developmental Review, September 2026 issuePAHO closed World Breastfeeding Week by emphasizing that the operational challenge is scaling support -- counseling, paid leave, workplace protection, and human-milk networks. Fewer than half of infants under six months in Latin America and the Caribbean are exclusively breastfed.
PAHO / WHO, August 7UTMB held its inaugural correctional health symposium linking infectious disease, mental health, chronic care, telemedicine, and reentry continuity. People move between correctional facilities and communities; interruptions in care affect patients, families, and public health.
UTMB Center for Correctional Health and Equity, August 7Researchers used inverse rendering to compensate for light scattering in cell-dense hydrogels, printing 500-micrometer vascular channels at 20 million cells per milliliter. This is a proof of concept, not a transplantable tissue.
arXiv preprint, August 5FDA's proposed MDUFA VI recommendations for fiscal years 2028-2031 passed their public comment deadline. User fees finance a substantial part of device-review capacity and shape how quickly products reach patients. Congressional reauthorization is still required.
FDA, August 5-7UNESCO completed regional youth consultations for the Arab region and Latin America on August 7 to shape the post-2030 global education agenda. Credibility will depend on whether final policy documents visibly preserve what participants said.
UNESCO / SDG 4 Education 2030, August 7EPA's Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals completed peer review of draft technical-support documents for five chemicals used in solvents, flame retardants, and fuels. Draft findings are not final risk determinations.
EPA / TSCA, August 3-7These cornerstone articles explain how evolutionary theory can be used to study human behavior. Begin with natural selection, behavioral ecology, tradeoffs, cooperation, and cultural evolution—the concepts that guide everything we publish.
The evidence in brief: Many preindustrial Europeans described a “first sleep” and “second sleep,” separated by…
Handing consequential decisions to something you cannot fully watch is the oldest management problem our speci…
Can frozen childhood tissue produce sperm years later? Yes, in one reported human case. Researchers transplant…
A worker honeybee may spend her life gathering food, regulating the temperature of the hive, feeding larvae, o…
A person watching an artificial intelligence (AI) system produce software, images, research summaries, or cust…
A Presbyterian minister dies in colonial America. His household loses more than a husband or father. It may lo…
Around 4,600 years ago, communities along the Nile turned stone, transport, skilled labor, food, administratio…
A computer can calculate a lending risk score in milliseconds. It can search a medical record faster than a ph…
People cooperate constantly. We raise children together, share food, build companies, follow rules, defend fri…
How Thomas Paine turned independence from elite argument into public judgment In January 1776, the American co…
Manifestation is usually sold as a cosmic shortcut. Think clearly enough, believe strongly enough, vibrate at…
How life history theory and Bill Perkins’ Die With Zero converge on the same uncomfortable arithmetic. A centu…
We examine human origins, adaptation, life history and the evolutionary tradeoffs that shaped our species. These articles explain established scientific concepts while identifying where evidence remains incomplete or contested.
Explore human evolution →Humans cooperate, compete, reciprocate, form coalitions and respond strongly to status and reputation. We explore how these behaviors work across families, groups, institutions and modern societies.
Explore behavior and cooperation →Biological evolution alone cannot explain human behavior. Our articles examine cultural transmission, religion, political identity, morality, social norms and the institutions through which people organize collective life.
Explore culture and society →Healthcare, insurance, artificial intelligence and automation are human systems before they are technical systems. We study how incentives, trust, accountability and judgment shape their outcomes.
Explore health and technology →The Hominid Post is a publication about human behavior, evolutionary anthropology, human behavioral ecology, and cultural evolution. We connect research on cooperation, conflict, kinship, status, health, technology, and institutions to the problems people face today.
Our editorial standard is evidence first, interpretation second, and speculation clearly labeled.