What drives an animal to help another, even at a cost to itself? How can self-sacrificial behavior, and true evolutionary altruism, develop within a survival-of-the-fittest framework?

National Geographic Explorer Patrick Kennedy and a team of researchers were inspired to study the mysteries of altruism from their previous fieldwork on a highly social and cooperative species: wasps. (Related: Parasitic Wasp Venom May Help Parkinson's Disease Research)

“Wasps are fantastic for studying altruism, because individual workers toil endlessly to raise someone else’s offspring—the queen’s!” says Kennedy.

Kennedy and his team attached tiny radio transmitters to the backs of thousands of wasps along the Panama Canal and tracked their movements.

“The tiny radio backpacks allow us to track in detail altruistic behavior across