Why Do Animals Sometimes Kill Their Babies?
Is it natural—or pathological—when a mother kills and eats her own offspring? Or when a brother kills his sister's child?
When Khali, a sloth bear at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, D.C., went into labor in late December last year, her keepers were thrilled. But soon after Khali delivered her first cub, something went wrong.
"We don't really know what happened," says Tony Barthel, a mammal curator in the zoo's Asia Trail section. He and the bears' keepers were watching Khali on a closed-circuit television. They cheered when they saw the palm-size cub come into the world.
Then, 20 minutes later, Khali—still in labor with other cubs—bent down, not to lick her newborn, but to eat it. The cheers turned to gasps of dismay.
"Our assumption is that the cub was not well, and it died," Barthel says.
Khali
