I was watching a Animal Planet Safari show yesterday that was centered around the lives of lions. All of it was information I’d heard before, but it was interesting visual footage.
Why do lions suck? Because male lions, when taking over a pride, kill all the cubs. They see them as competition for their own cubs. WTF? How does that help propogate the species? And the lionesses do nothing to protect their children. They just moan afterwards. And of course, will soon be impregnated by the new lions. Sluts! Seeing those adorable little cubs, lying flat on the ground with their ears down in fear, get mauled by the new male escorts of the pride was just too much for me.
Taking over a pride involves fighting with the established males. If you win, you are obviously more fit than the lions that you defeated. Killing the cubs ensures that your genes will be passed on.
But, being a teacher, you already knew that. This is just a thinly veiled slam at my beloved Detroit Lions.
Robins aren’t so cute if you’re an earthworm. And lions wouldn’t seem so evil if their cubs looked like earthworms. Cuteness rules our view of nature, which is good because the same things that makes cubs so irresistable (big heads, big eyes, stumbling about in such an adorable fashion) also make our own young irresistable.
However, we can find the lions’ attitude toward stepchildren in our own culture. See “Cinderella” and “Snow White” as frinstances that everybody know.
Ruffian, it’s not just lions - lots of felines do this. Domestic toms will kill kittens not sired by them, tigers will sometimes kill cubs that they find unattended (don’t know if they kill just any cub or ones not sired by them). FWIW, domestic queens will usually defend their kittens from strange toms, but aren’t usually able to prevent the male from killing them eventually if he is determined.
It’s not really about competition with their own cubs, but about survival of the strongest genes. The winning males have proven their superiority over the defeated males - why should they now wait several months while the lionesses rear some other male’s cubs, when they might die before they ever get a chance to pass on their genes? When the existing cubs are killed, the lionesses will come back into heat almost immediately and be receptive to the new males.
I don’t think felines are the only animals that do this, but I don’t have any handy verifiable info. But hasn’t something like this been proposed as one of the reasons stepchildren are often abused by the stepparent - other primates have been seen to do this?
I think it’s yucky behavior, too - maybe it outrages our maternal instincts or something. But a lot of what occurs in nature is yucky from the human viewpoint.
Male bears will kill any cubs that they find unattended. Remember reading a National Geographic article (I think it was NG, not 100% sure) that had a pretty neat picture of a sow facing down a boar in defense of the cubs.
Someone here once posted that stallions will kick pregnant mares to cause them to abort unborn foals. Have to find the thread.
Nature is a harsh place, and most animals focus on reproduction stratigies that are not entirely pretty to those of us with our backgrounds.
OK, I, too, thought this was about the Detroit Lions, and, as a long-suffering fan, I was going to ask if you put this in MPSIMS because the Straight Dope doesn’t have a “Tell Us Something We DON’T Know” forum.
