Recently, I’m sure most of you have heard about the aggressiveness of other species. Why has this been occurring only in the past few years? Have
they become influenced by the behaviour of humans? Or are they just adapting?
This article:
Attack of the Killer Dolphin
was very recent. It also mentions other animals which have recently have showed aggressive behaviour to other species such as; seagulls attacking
penguins for fish, a buffalo attacking lions.
Cannbials resort to this due to either being evolved and adapted to, in desperate moments or even for even, er, passionate times in their life.
Now bonobos have found to be cannibals (sighted in a zoo), from this
Article .
From:
"We've never seen anything like this," says Vanessa Woods at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who studies semi-captive bonobos at
a reserve. "The last time I saw an infant die, the mother held onto it for days and the keepers had trouble taking the body away."
To a mother eating her daughter:
They also spent 7½ hours eating the body - longer than they take over a similar-sized monkey. Some even played with it. "If they just think
of it as another piece of meat, why do they behave differently with it?" he asks
Apparently, the reason for this is that they haven’t been eating enough proteins.
Dian Fossey – 1970s, found 2 gorilla’s in the faeces of a mother gorilla and her daughter.
Obviously, we all know primitive humans used to eat one another. This still does occur today in tribes e.g. in Papua New Guinea
.
Chimpanzees are the ones who eat their own most often – normally it’s the males who eat a child from the same group. They’ll even do it to us.
Other Animals Resorting to Cannibalism:
- Rodents. This is a video of er rats eating another one at 0.39s.
Video Link
- Sand tiger sharks. You could say this is the survival of the fittest being demonstrated here. In the womb, they develop fangs and then eat the other
sibling.
- Australian redback spider (during copulation)
- Female Mantis – she eats her mate after he jumps on her back to mate.
- Rattlesnakes eat their newborn for strength after birth.
For more information on cannibalism and different types of animals which carry this out, click
here
Why are bonobos, orang-utans and gorilla’s following after the chimpanzee’s footsteps just recently? Any views on what you think that may be
causing this to occur? And could we expect eventually this animal’s aggressive behaviour to be used upon us?
[edit on 16/2/2010 by BlackPoison94]