Professor Sarah Pallas gave a seminar lecture earlier this week I believe on Monday, and I unfortuately did not attend, but coworkers of mine did and described to me the study she presented to discuss. She works in zoology and neuroscience, and so her topic was the canibalistic behaviors of hamsters. In short, female hamsters often eat their mates, cohabitating hamsters will eat each other, and mothers often eat their young. As a biology major who has studied the evolution and psychology, this had me baffled; A mother hamster eats her offspring. Evolutionarily, typically organisms form behaviors that benefit their own survival and the survival of their progeny. In complex organisms, children will be prioritized: A mother will give her life for a baby. Paternally its a different story because its not such a guarentee that the offspring is genetically theirs. Anyway, so the offspring should be valued above self because that is the ultimate goal of life. If the progeny don't survive, then the individual's genetics will never live beyond their own live, and all lives being finite, it will not pass on its genes to the species population. This all goes completely out the window when considering the canibalism of a mother eating her kids. She has put in her physical energy into these beings for them to expand her genetic outreach in the species and live past her own generation, but she turns around and consumes her fruit to be of seemingly no evolutionary benefit. Its much more worth your time to find food than grow a child for dinner. I begin to wonder the short-term benefits of this that may drive this behavior. A food source, less competition for one offspring if the others are killed, and thats it. The take aways are significant: no futured genetic line. Without offspring it diminishes the point to continue living to simply staying alive for oneself. This would be worth it if the mother had significant fertility remaining, but the offspring that are on the cusp of pubescence are going to be more fertile and have far more chance to reproduce than an already-parent would, and considering that the offspring would pass on the genes of the parents to yet another generation seems like the children should be spared when food is scarce. This question of "Why" extends far beyond hamsters though, considering the news articles and horror stories written about human behaviors of parents killing their own kids. One specific one comes to mind: Casey Anthony. This case involved the extreme addiction of the mother to drugs, alcohol, and partying, so much that it came before her daughter's life. This psychology, unfortunately, happens a lot. Addiction can overrule many a benefitial behavior and there are endless examples party to that statement. This case with the hamster however is driven by the need to basic survival, not a rewiring of the brain to demand one thing over the hard-wired other, but an organized behavior built-in. Its very interesting, and I still don't get why it happens, so I should have gone to the seminar.
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