The Selfish Gene was dropped. The book contains no illustrations. The book has been translated into at least 23 languages including Arabic, Thai and Turkish. In 2006, a 30th-anniversary edition was published with the Trivers foreword and a new introduction by the author. It was accompanied by a "festschrift" entitled "" (2006). In March 2006, a special event entitled "The Selfish Gene": Thirty Years On was held at the London School of Economics. In March 2011, Audible Inc published an audiobook edition narrated by Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward. In 2016, Oxford University Press published a 40th anniversary edition with a new epilogue,
The Selfish Gene by limiting family size to conform with available resources, thus avoiding extinction as predicted under the Malthusian model of population growth. Dawkins says that his "purpose" in writing "The Selfish Gene" is "to examine the biology of selfishness and altruism." He does this by supporting the claim that "gene selfishness will usually give rise to selfishness in individual behaviour. However, as we shall see, there are special circumstances in which a gene can achieve its own selfish goals best by fostering a limited form of altruism at the level of individual animals." Gene selection provides one explanation for kin selection