Empathy proves critical for human survival and helps set us apart from other animals. Empathy entails us holding the ability to understand, feel, and care about the emotions and conditions of others.
As a species, humans' excessive empathy gives us a survival advantage. Even mammals more broadly hold more empathy than other animal types like reptiles, spineless invertebrates, etc, which gives the mammals classification a competitive edge over other animal types. We see this strongly among elephants, whales, and chimpanzees.
