I’m fascinated by the slow but steady trickle of evolutionary studies of morality. (Here’s the latest. And here’s the quiz.)

On the one hand, they’re just damn silly. Really, disgust evolved because we started to eat meat? I’ve seen dogs throw up out of disgust; I think it’s safe to say disgust isn’t unique to our species. These folks need to leave campus more. Or just go to the zoo for a day.

Then there’s the ah-ha! angle. There’s less and less of this, but I’m always alert for the brag: “See, it’s all just genetics. I always knew ‘morality’ wasn’t anything more than meaningless emotions!” Because we all know that anything that evolved is meaningless, right? Especially emotions. Nothing to see there, folks. Move along.

Of course morality evolved! We‘re doing it, aren’t we?

But it’s nice to see the studies get better and more reasonable and less biased. I hope the evolutionary psychologists doing these studies will be in closer touch with ethologists who’ve done similar work for years. No reason to do everything from scratch.

(Hat tip to 4alarm.)