Sloth Bear Case Study

Supposedly animals kill their young because they are sick, for genes or can't find food. It is shown that when the baby is deformed or sick the mother will often times eat her child for nutritional values. In this case this is what happened at the Smithsonian National Zoo when Khali, a sloth bear, soon after giving birth devoured her cubs. Apparently the birth was monitored via zoo staff and they cheered when the first little cub cam out into the world but 20 min later, still in labor, she bent down and ate her cub. The cub was presumed sick by the zoo staff but no tests could be run since there was no body. She gave birth to two more cubs and was monitored for the next week, all seemed to be fine until she ate yet another cub and ignored the last. …show more content…
Soon after all sloth bears were diagnosed with the flu which might explain the mother resection. Though once older she was slowly reintroduce with the rest of the bears though why did the mother behave this way? How did she know her babies were sick? Another reason why the young ones are killed is because the males only want their genes to be passed on. A good example of this is lions, there is normally one male in the pride and if the lion is overthrown the new male will kill all offspring of the previous male, (despite efforts of the females) this will make the female's fertile once again. Finally the females will mate with the vary males who killed their young. Messed up right? Finally animals will kill their young because they cannot find food, it would just be a burden and hassle to provide food for the parent and young as well. Often times if a newborn dies they will immediately eat their child so there is nothing rotting in their den and it does not bring scavengers to the