Altruism is helping in a self-sacrificial manner (whether or not one actually sacrifices anything, it's altruism as long as the potential is there).
A person protecting their family is acting instinctively not altruistically. A person "helping" their family may or may not be acting altruistically, their motives would have to be examined to determine which.
Wonky, so helping my son with his homework may be more altruistic than saving him from a burning building. . .
They "just do it" because it is instinct- not altruism. If the ant could be altruistic surely there would be cases where the ant defended the beetle or the lady bug.
Once again assuming relatives are excluded.
Yes, I know I am being ridiculous with this statement, but no more ridiculous than you speculating on the ant's reasoning process.
Actually I said the ant does not reason.
While that may work for many things, it does not work for altruism.
It does, and as I said before the scientific study of altruism has predictive value for the behavior of many organism.
For once you have attributed a reason for altruism to be, it ceases to be altruism in the original sense of the word.
It kind of sucks to realize that everything you think you do for a noble reason, you only do because genes for doing so have been more successful than genes for not doing so, and genes for the accompanying emotions are part of it. But nobody thinks about it for long, and it is true that people do have a choice about whether to follow altruistic urges or not--at least as long as they are convinced they have a choice. ;-)
“There are none so blind, as those who would not see...”
You sir, have been blinded by science.