How would we know if a hyena died for another hyena? They don't have media or storytelling apparatus. His point about dolphins is that similar behavior is in fact observed in the wild.
many animals have been observed in the wild for many years, it's been observed animals will save their own lives and or avoid injury even when their offspring are in peril, heck some eat their own young.
do dolphins protect other species or are they just attacking a known predator/enemy? If you can show me that they don't attack sharks for example, if no other creature is around then perhaps that's plausible but it can't be shown that they wouldn't have attacked anyway in the absence of creatures they are supposedly protecting.
My point is neither are humans if you start to scale back the modernity of our current life, our ability to control our surroundings.
here's the problem I see, there seems to be a conflation of the individual with the group. Humans seem to do things for the greater good, society, human kind, I have seen no evidence or plausible explanation that animals also exhibit this behavior. Actually on the contrary in that animals are individual self serving creatures which survive and thrive, but kept in balance by a variety of factors. This can not be said of humans generally.
I would accept that at some point caveman or whatever was like any other animal with a drive to pass on their personal genetics. But when and why did that change because it seems what we know, observe and what we are now is much different than that for the reasons stated. Yes there is a drive or desire to procreate but it's much more than that, and I have yet to see it observed or proven that it's similar in any other creature.
