Why don't animals eat their offspring?

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by timojin, Jul 13, 2016.

  1. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    • Thread split - please post on-topic in future.
    Let me add this question : Why does an animal does not eat his offspring ? meat is meat , why does a mother animal crocodile or human protect their offspring , what does an animal know of survive of his own specie ?
     
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  3. The Great Red Dragon Registered Member

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    Actually, animals do eat their offspring due to lack of resources/out of necessity. Saying that they don't eat their offspring is simply incorrect. If the child isn't healthy, or if the animal is in dire need of food, it will eat it's offspring.
     
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  5. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    So let me put you this way , forget the carnivorous, would I be correct if say herbivorous, Necessity is a different story I knew people they eat their small brother during the starvation period in the Ukraine.
    What that stupid molecule DNA or RNA know about preventing extinction
     
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  7. The Great Red Dragon Registered Member

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    Anatomically the overwhelming majority of herbivores cannot eat meat, as their dentature and gastric systems were intended for cellulose. Therefore it cannot eat it's own offspring without suffering adverse consequences.
     
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  8. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    If the mother can survive to reproduce another day, it would have been worth it to eat her young. If she dies, her young are likely to die anyway.
     
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  9. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    I think you mist my point. Have you seen how elephants or bisons protect their caff , Why ? if there is not a program for survival of the speci . . Then how this program is build into us . If we are made just at random the chemical just don't give a dam,
     
  10. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    I've reported this for derailing the thread.

    The OP raised a rather interesting and serious question and you are messing it up with your own irrelevant interjections on an unrelated topic.
     
  11. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    They don't "know" anything. It is an instinct programmed into their brains. If they didn't have it, the species would become extinct in a generation or two.
     
  12. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    It’s rare for any animal-kingdom father to eat his own young when he isn’t desperate for food, but the male grizzly bear will do just that. These baby-daddies are extremely protective of their territories, which can range all the way up to 1,500 miles, and are opportunistic hunters, willing to kill and eat anything that happens to enter their home turf –even their own cubs

    http://mentalfloss.com/article/30925/5-worst-fathers-animal-kingdom
     
  13. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    I believe you are the irrelavant . Stop pretending of been a scientist , you horizon is limited .
     
  14. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    The believe this is programmed by some other, than random chemicals arranging themselves
     
  15. Janus58 Valued Senior Member

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    Let's put it this way: you have two groups of chemicals that have randomly arranged themselves so that they can consume and reproduce. One group, by random chance, does not consume its own offspring, while the other does. Which group do you think is going to prosper better and leave behind more of its own kind?
    The trait to abstain from eating your own offspring only has to randomly crop up once and will tend to self propagate from then on.
     
  16. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    Wise guy why do you have to give me only two groups , and in one group you are position your winner ( RANDOM ) Why not three groups ( one that not eat his own ).
    Beside Chemical don't position himself and chemicals don't eat each other , they react to form an different compound.
     
  17. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    That's where you are wrong. Chemicals behave in quite complex ways. Evolution isn't even chemistry, it describes what happens when you have variable survival of reproducing forms competing for the same resources.
     
  18. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Some of them do. Most don't due to evolutionary forces.
     
  19. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    What is that (Most don't due to evolutionary forces.) can you come up with something better then that ? specially mammals
     
  20. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Specifically, evolution selects for those who can raise the most offspring to a reproductive age. Thus eating one's young reduces evolutionary fitness. A species that eats all of its young goes extinct almost immediately, which is why species (including mammals) do not.

    In some cases mammals (bears, canines, felines and even apes) will eat their young if they cannot nurse them, or if they are sick. The evolutionary angle there is that they are going to die anyway, and this way the mother gets some nutritional value from them. This allows the mother to (potentially) survive to give birth again.
     
  21. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    I posted but the good administration did not allow to be printed
    Com on guy you are talking intelligence a process of thinking by these animals . I have heard in my old country wolfs kill their pop if it is sick , but to apply that this is evolutionary process , that is reading in your wish.
     
  22. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    No, just instinct. There is some "thinking" of course but most animal behavior is driven by instinct, not morality or a reasoned tradeoff between two options or anything like that.
    Quite simple. Wolfs that kill their pups if they are sick are more successful reproducers than wolves who suckle, care for and defend their pups even when they are sick. One set survives and one does not, so the behavior of the survivors is perpetuated.
     

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