What Meerkat Murder Tells Us About Human Violence
Here are the 30 mammal species most likely to kill their own kind. #1 might surprise you. https://t.co/qdprrwBjvl pic.twitter.com/vB0e6NjdbZ
— Ed Yong (@edyong209) September 28, 2016
A new study of violent behavior in more than 1,000 mammal species found the meerkat is the mammal most likely to be murdered by one of its own kind.
The study, led by José María Gómez of the University of Granada in Spain and published Wednesday in the journal Nature, analyzed more than 4 million deaths among 1,024 mammal species and compared them with findings in 600 studies of violence among humans from ancient times until today.
The findings tell us two things:
- Some amount of violence between humans is attributable to our place on the evolutionary tree.
- Meerkats are surprisingly murderous.
More: What Meerkat Murder Tells Us About Human Violence : The Two-Way : NPR