Instinct and instinct. Some aboriginal people did the same as did the less than aboriginal Spartans. It increases the survival rate of the species in general.
In this instance, no. With fear of heights, yes. With the Inuits the elderly would wander out onto ice floes to stay when they were no longer able to contribute to the survival of the family. The instinct for survival is intense...which explains why fear-mongering is so successful.
It's the natural order of things. The imperfect offspring wouldn't be able to survive on their own in the wild, so they kill them to save them the trouble.
How does an animal understand love? All animals have a soul. They have feelings, emotions. Mothers in the wild care for their young. If something is trying to harm them, the mother will protect her offspring until every last ounce of blood is drained from her body. Whatever could occur with us, I'm sure it happens with other animals as well. We are more evolved, but we are all animals non-the-less. No one can truly understand everything about animals, but if you've studied them for as long as I have, you'll get a very clear idea about all of it.
With their hands?? lol - I'm an animal lover - matter fact the more people I meet, the more I love my dog! Animals feel pain, know fear, they also recognise kindness. However when a moose loses her calf to a pack of wolves; she just knows the calf is no longer with her and moves on to eat, sleep, reproduce, and dodge wolves; she does not pine away for her lost calf. Few animals mate for life (wolves do) but they don't live a fairy tale existance. Walt put animals into family units and human type perdiciments, and over time that's how people came to view them. Animals don't have the power of reason (same as the 7 dwarfs lol) Thats what seperates them from us.
Because you feel the way you do - I know you are a good person. Ever notice that people who treat animals poorly are usually not worth knowing?
I notice that all the time lol. But animals do reason. I watched a documentary on wolves. There was a big pack of them, but then when the person making the documentary left, the pack fell apart. I can't exactly remember how. There was one left though, and he always stayed by where he grew up. Then the man that made the document died and that wolf felt it. He was so depressed. All he did for weeks was howled, and it was sorrowful.
My dog reasons. She goes to do something I have told her not to do, then remembers me telling her not to do it, and she stops. If that isn't reason, I don't know what is.
I grew up on Disney movies. That is true. But I have always been able to separate the truth from stories.
Animals have amazing instincts, and can sense "imperfections" in their young and other animals. I think they kill runts at birth out of mercy, because in the wild only the strong survive.
If food and nutrients are hard to come by then the mother or w/e can't always afford to try and keep the weakest offspring and divide all of her attention. In some environments it's hard enough to just raise one child to adulthood and so they must choose to keep the strongest. Even though physically weaker organisms might have just as much or more mental capability, a strong physical presence is necessary for such animals as the tiger as you have pictured. Funny how people do just the opposite, and everyone and anyone is given equal opportunity to exist. We're very nice :D but maybe detrimental in the long run ?
When my dog had a litter, two of the pups had eye defects but neither of them got eaten. Similarly a friend has adopted two kittens; one with only one eye and the other only had three legs.
The reason they had to be adopted was the human owner didn't want to devote the time to them NOT the feline mother.
Animals have to be tough to survive in the wild, so I suppose it's a 'survival of the fittest' thing. Sometimes I think humans would be better off if they practiced that instead of sending the 'best and brightest' off to war and leaving the rest home to breed. Just a thought, but then along comes someone like Stephen Hawkin. Maybe we will eventually end war if only the 'unwarlike' were allowed to breed. Who knows?
My guess would be that the offspring is considered unfit to survive. As it grows, keeping up with the family and performing everyday tasks will be a struggle. I'd like to think animals were that compassionate not to want to watch their children struggle, but end their suffering before it really begins.
I've never heard of this happening. It's only seen in select species. I had a dog who had puppies. They were all flawed, but she didn't kill any of them. That to which you are referring is called Filial infanticide. It doesn't occur in all species. However, when it does happen, usually the parents will consume their offspring. This can be seen in fish, and I know mice do it sometimes, too. It has nothing to do with them being imperfect though. That's never been proven.
I suspect that this is true only of a very small section of the animal kingdom, as the majority of species actually care as much as feasibly possible for their weak.
In the insect kingdom it is not uncommon for the parent to be eaten by their young, and pigs will not discriminate between the healthy or the unhealthy and eat the entire litter...
In other words, that keeps the imperfected gene out of the blood line
However when a moose loses her calf to a pack of wolves; she just knows the calf is no longer with her and moves on to eat, sleep, reproduce, and dodge wolves; she does not pine away for her lost calf. Few animals mate for life (wolves do) but they don't live a fairy tale existance.
Walt put animals into family units and human type perdiciments, and over time that's how people came to view them. Animals don't have the power of reason (same as the 7 dwarfs lol) Thats what seperates them from us.
Because you feel the way you do - I know you are a good person. Ever notice that people who treat animals poorly are usually not worth knowing?
My dog reasons. She goes to do something I have told her not to do, then remembers me telling her not to do it, and she stops. If that isn't reason, I don't know what is.
I grew up on Disney movies. That is true. But I have always been able to separate the truth from stories.
When my dog had a litter, two of the pups had eye defects but neither of them got eaten. Similarly a friend has adopted two kittens; one with only one eye and the other only had three legs.
The reason they had to be adopted was the human owner didn't want to devote the time to them NOT the feline mother.
In the insect kingdom it is not uncommon for the parent to be eaten by their young, and pigs will not discriminate between the healthy or the unhealthy and eat the entire litter...