Identifiable victim effect

Biological Parallel

Mother elephants will spend days attempting to revive a dead calf they can see and touch, while remaining indifferent to the plight of distant, unknown juveniles in the herd. This proximity bias evolved because in small ancestral groups, identifiable individuals were likely kin or reciprocal partners worth extraordinary investment, while distant others offered minimal inclusive fitness returns. The identifiable victim effect is kin selection's geographic constraint: helping mechanisms evolved to activate for proximate, recognizable individuals where relatedness probability was highest.