"If you saw the documentary “March of the Penguins” then you know how the dads in this unlucky species spend the entire winter standing in temperatures way below zero, in the howling Antarctic winds, with an egg tucked between feet and belly fat. (By this point in the breeding cycle, the mothers have taken off for the Antarctic seas—warmer, but hardly St. Bart’s—to recover from their pregnancies by chowing down on baby squid.) Essential to the males’ survival, and the survival of their unhatched offspring, is the way these guys huddle together for warmth. But also essential is the way they rotate the huddle, so that everybody takes a turn on the butt-freezing periphery, everybody gets a turn in the cozy warm center, and everybody moves equally through every level in between. Each individual penguin wants to stay warm and to hatch his chick—that’s the self-interest part. But to stay warm, he needs the group, because without the aggregated heat of all those bodies, he and his future offspring would freeze. To keep the group alive, and thus each individual alive, everybody has to play fair—to cooperate."
By Paul J. Zak / more
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