That is a cool thought, though you meant to say never experienced death themselves before reproducing. The fear response allowed individuals to statistically reproduce more often. Evolution works at the population level not the individual.

I’m not a biologist or particularly knowledgeable about the subject but I thought the jury is still out on that depending on who you ask. I am a noob but I thought it works on the gene level: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene-centered_view_of_evolutio...