Are there serial killers in the animal kingdom?

[Enola_Gay]

@Zsofia

Not necessarily for fun, but wasn’t there a chimp in Jane Goodall’s observations whose baby died, so she stole and killed other baby chimps?

@Colibri

Passion and her daughter Pom killed and ate several baby chimps, a behavior that has since been observed in other groups.

This is fascinating. I had never heard about this case but that is extremely interesting.

@mske

How about animals who killed multiple humans?

Maybe these are budding animal serial killers. You know how human serial killers usually start off killing animals? Maybe animal serial killers start off by killing humans

@Sailboat

Depending on your semantic niggling about the definition of “animal,” humans are a species of chimpanzee, and essentially vice versa, or we are so much the same that the differences are probably exaggerated in human minds. If humans have serial killers it seems likely other chimp species share that trait.

Actually what prompted this question was a program I was watching on serial killers and one of “experts” (a criminal psychiatrist) was speculating that violence in our society (esp the gratuitous sort on tv & in movies) is what ‘creates’ serial killers…which of course suggests that serial murderers are made, not born (a theory I don’t subscribe to).

I have heard others draw similar conclusions about homosexuality…that it is a ‘learned behavior’. I know enough gay people to know that is wrong so when I first heard this, I looked into homosexuality in the animal kingdom and found that it indeed exists…which imo debunks the theory that sexual orientation is learned.

But I agree that if it is present in the animal kingdom, then serial killing is most likely NOT a learned behavior, but rather it is due to some organic, congenital cause.

(btw, I am in NO way comparing serial killers to homosexuals…was just attempting to debunk the myth using the same method).