Killing by Animals

My cat kills birds, mice, frogs, insects etc, and she doesn't generally eat any of them. Many animals kill for other reasons than food, e.g. to eliminate potential mating rivals. Male lions may kill the offspring of other males.

Yes.

Most often it is to clear competitors out of their territories.

This applies to animals of the same and different species.

Given the opportunity, lions will kill hyenas and cheetahs without any motivation of self-defense or protecting a kill.

A single hyena unfortunate enough to find itself in the midst of a group of lionesses or within reach of a male lion is a dead hyena. Only very hungry lions will eat a hyena they kill in this way. Saw a show where a pair of male lions hunted and killed a cheetah, and not for food and almost certainly not for sport. The typical prey animal of a cheetah is really just a snack for a single lion and barely anything for a pride so while lions will certainly kill and eat small antelope if given the opportunity, the cheetah isn't really a poaching threat. However, hunting is difficult business and predators fail more times than they succeed. Except in times of great abundance this has them living on a razors edge with hunger and starvation they simply can't afford to have their hunting made more difficult and any big cat roaming and hunting within a lion's territory is going to affect prey animal behavior and make lions' hunting more difficult.

Male lions that take over a pride will usually kill all of the existing cubs so as to clear the way for its own genes.

Hippos are particularly savage when it comes to territorial battles and go for their adversary's testicles. Makes sense if you want to dominate the local stock of female hippos.

Likewise, chimps are quite brutal with those they attacks during territorial wars.

Male bears have been known to kill cubs they find unattended by their mothers (again, likely a gene spreading thing) and on occasion the mother if she comes to her cubs rescue and is not of sufficient size and ferocity to drive the male away.

Nature shows often portray the various battles that occur during mating season, but rarely the ones that end with a fatality. This may be because they are rare. In most cases, if one of the combatants submits or retreats the dominant male will let it go. It might, in one sense, be wise to finish off a challenger so that he never comes back, but doing so exposes the dominant male to serious injury or death. Once the loser calls it off the safest bet is for the winner to enjoy his victory and recover from whatever injuries he may have sustained. However, this is not an automatic outcome as some shows would seem to imply. The creatures involved in these battles have formidable weapons and they are not pulling their punches. Lethal blows can and have been delivered.

Whether you refer to these killings as murder is a matter of semantics. Not that all human murders are senseless or done for sick pleasure, but I am unaware of any species where such killings, to the extent they happen at all, are anything but extremely isolated and more than likely due to the "murdering" animal being diseased in some way. Often animals like cats and killer whales are described as "cruel" or "sadistic" for playing with their catches but there are sensible survival behaviors likely involved here too. One is the "play" is actually a means of teaching offspring how to hunt and kill or to practice the skills required. Another, particularly as respects cats, is that while the cat usually is much larger and more powerful than its prey, the prey is not harmless. Mice and rats can deliver very nasty bites. Any injury is a serious detriment to the survival of an animal that isn't thinking about receiving medical attention when it hunts. In addition to killing the animal outright a serious injury can severely compromise a predator's ability to hunt. Hunting failures lead to hunger which can lead to death due to starvation or disease. Animal hunting methods have evolved to make a very violent behavior as safe for them as possible. One of the reasons cats may play with their catch is to weaken the prey to the point where it can't strike back when the cat goes in for the kill with it's mouth. Not even a cat wants to put its face in the way of a rat's snapping teeth.

Your use of the term "murder" is interesting. Historically, there have been reports of large cats murdering humans. Such reports aren't just the stuff of dubious, anecdotal reports from the past. Twenty years ago, a Siberian tiger murdered humans--the tiger thereafter seems to have become a kind of serial killer:

Siberian tiger's revenge killing

The source here, UK's Daily Mail, is considered a tabloid, but not with a necessarily bad reputation. This was reported all over the world, and is the subject of a book, which was why it was in the Mail, as a book review.

People like to talk about cats as serial killers.

Here's another way to think of it. A cat kills because his instincts tell him to, and his instincts tell him to because "always hunt" is an instinct that helped his ancestors get the food they needed. So indirectly he is killing because of a need for food. Once the bird is dead, he may find he isn't that hungry.

This is an excellent program describing the natural histories of lions and hyenas and the competition between them. Both are trying to fill the same ecological niche. Both are predators and scavengers, and they are engaged in a perpetual war. Hyenas will kill lions and vice a versa.

In the case of the Siberian tiger mentioned, he killed a man who had "stolen" some of one of his kills, and he then began stalking humans systematically. The term serial killer was appropriate in that case.

Far too many people on-line have little to contribute other than dismissals of what others post. That's kind of sad for them.

I actually hadn't read your post about the tiger. I was thinking about my own cat when I posted. Heck of a coincidence, both of us posting about cats as serial killers.

Anyway, welcome back.

Thanks, but I wasn't gone--just avoiding the surfeit of bullshit here.

Primafes have been observed killing each other. I think it is common. http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29237276

I read an account where one social group of apes were observed hunting and killing a rival group in a way that would be called genocide had they been humans. I thought this was reported by Jane Goodall, but I can't find the reference now.

Thank you.

My dobermans were great rat catchers. Yeah, killed them on the run. They never ate them.

My dog constantly hunts to kill. His victims include possums, moles, birds, attacks on copperheads, tortoises, and, sadly, cats. People come in my neighborhood and dump cats and for some reason, many choose my yard to enter. I never see these animals in time to save them, except the tortoises, due to the hard shell. He does not eat any of it, just wants to carry it around. I take it at the first opportunity and dispose of it properly.

A troop of chimps killed and cannibalized its tyrannical alpha leader.

Female chimps have been know to kill the babies of other females.

And has been noted, chimps will slaughter any chimp invading their territory.

"Nature, red in tooth and claw" - Lord Tennyson.