Infanticide In Nature

For John, BLUF:  Civilization makers for a better world.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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In The New York Times is an article, "Unraveling Why Some Mammals Kill Of Infants".  here is the beginning of the article:

In the early 1970s, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy,♠ then a graduate student at Harvard, traveled to India to study Hanuman langurs, monkeys that live in troops, each made up of several females and a male.

From time to time, Dr. Hrdy observed a male invade a troop, driving off the patriarch. And sometimes the new male performed a particularly disturbing act of violence.  He attacked the troop’s infants.

Yes, males of various species are known to kill off infants sired by previous males.

The question is if this applies to the human species.  These last two paragraphs suggest no.

That’s not to say that adults never harm — or even kill — children.  But Dr. Hrdy argued that the infanticide she documented in langurs — in which males stalked babies for days — was fundamentally different from what happens in our own species.

“A male would have to pull out a butcher knife and stab the baby, but that’s not what you’re seeing,” said Dr. Hrdy.  “I don’t think langur infanticide tells us much.  I think it’s a very different phenomenon.”

Maybe.  There is a Canadian study (close enough) that showed that when the natural father is replaced in the home those who are very young are at greater risk than if it is the natural Father present.  Not to say it is right, or legal, but it is, apparently, part of our long term mammalian inheritance.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Yes, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy.  I looked it up.