Hi belMarduk,
Since we cannot communicate with animals why do there actions become null. They could just as well be altruism as not - so what makes it automatically impossible. Oh dear, I never even suggested that animals' actions "become null". There are many other positive attributes that can apply to actions, besides altruism. My point is that altruism as a moral criterion hinges on the agent's intentions, and in the case of animals, we have no way of knowing those in advance. If we judged altruism of an action after the fact, we run into problems with human altruistic projects that have ended in disaster.