Does Wild Justice represent a departure from accepted evolutionary theory?
Not at all. The thesis of Wild Justice that animals display moral behaviors may sound radical, but it really isn’t. In fact, the research we present in Wild Justice and the evolutionary theory behind our work is mainstream. Here’s an example of how we build on evolutionary theory: Wild Justice is grounded in the concept of evolutionary continuity, which means that animals share a broad range of physical, mental, and behavioral traits. The continuity of physical traits has been accepted by evolutionary biologists since Charles Darwin wrote about this idea in On the Origin of Species (1859). Although there was initial resistance to the suggestion (which Darwin explored in his later books The Descent of Man and in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals) that there is also continuity in behavioral and mental traits, it is now well-accepted that animals and humans share a whole spectrum of emotional and cognitive capacities. Wild Justice simply builds on this idea, suggesting tha
