Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most vicious of them all? Most of us go disgracefully goo-goo and gaga when we encounter baby animals and birds — and of course, baby humans too. Those tiny cute, furry features, the big bug eyes, that hilarious waddle-waddle or drunken stagger, irresistible right? Brace for crash-landing. Many of these cuties are little horrors. Many babies across the animal kingdom think nothing of slaughtering their siblings in ways a psychotic chain-saw serial killer would envy. And it’s usually all in order to get more attention (food and TLC) from mama and papa, who, alas, in many cases shamelessly aid and abet the carnage. Deep underwater, the notorious baby sand tiger shark, however, doesn’t present such moral dilemmas to its mama: The egg to hatch first and grow to a certain size, still unborn, is armed and dangerous, and will eat every other developing embryo in its mother’s womb in a gruesome version of The Hunger Games (“The baby just burped!”). Birds are also notorious for this. I’ve watched with horror, an obese black kite chick mercilessly peck and hack its baby sibling to death in its nest — while its hulking parent stuffed it to the gills and paid scant attention to the battered wimp. Not pretty. It’s worse when you watch those snowy white angel-winged egret chicks do this to each other because they’re really armed with skewers and those terrible eyes. Some babies are slaughtered in the nest, some are pushed out and some starve to death simply because they don’t yell loud enough at feeding time. Charming. It’s usually the first born that goes in for this sort of bullying. Ah, you may think, why have two or more babies if this sort of carnage is going to take place at home? Well, it’s believed that birds usually do this so they have some sort of insurance; if something terrible happens to the laadla/laadli, there’s always another one to carry those delightful genes forward. If there is enough food going around, then who knows, even the wuss may grow up and leave home one day. Some birds even lay their eggs sequentially with a gap of days between each, so that the first hatched is already a lout by the time his little sibling is born. To take some names (so you can check up their delightful family lives), blue-footed boobies, laughing gulls, several raptors, the American robin and great tit are up there on the blacklist, some blacker than others. Baby mammals too are no angels. Spotted hyena pups are born with a desire to fight each other (for superiority) and all those plump pink piglets suckling in a row have mouths full of dreadful knives with which they slash and rip each other for their place at the milk bar. Dogs at home are no exception and will fight for your attention, especially if they’re of the same sex. Of course, some of the most bizarre examples come from the world of creepy crawlies. What sometimes happens here can be termed as sibling genocide. There’s a species of common American wasp which lays its eggs (one or two) in the egg of the cabbage looper moth. The moth egg hatches into a caterpillar and the wasp eggs grow in berry-like clusters, which eventually develop into upto 3,000 genetically identical maggot-like larval siblings, sucking the blood of the caterpillar. But no, not all are maggot-like — up to a quarter are hideous sinuous creatures with wicked jaws, which they use to kill their siblings. The survivors of this carnage grow into wasps and fly away. The “soldiers” (as they’re called) just die. It’s thought that their presence may be a sort of population control mechanism: 3,000 babies would suck a caterpillar dry very quickly. Also, it is a way of ensuring the protection of the family jewels (!), as often, more than one wasp lays its eggs in the unfortunate moth egg, and there’s only room for one family. Apparently, there’s a battle of the sexes that takes place too: if the wasp has laid two eggs, one hatches thousands of male babies the other, thousands of female ones — and the lady soldiers kill off their brothers because they, the ladies, share all of their sisters’ genes while only some of their brothers’ genes (which came from a different egg), so it is evolutionarily advantageous for them. Also, just a few males can fertilize thousands of females, the rest are quite redundant. Mercifully, not all mamas can bear to watch their children eat each other. The female of the Australian “social crab spider”, lays up to 70 eggs in a single clutch in her lifetime. When these hatch into spiderlings, she hunts for them for up to four months. By now, the babies’ appetite is voracious and she can no longer meet their needs. There’s danger that they will turn on each other. They’re still too small to “leave home” and must stay together. So, in the ultimate sacrifice, she offers herself. The little horrors start on her legs and “arms”, then take her eyes out and finally her body: the jaws and poisonous fangs are last, so she can protect them, tooth and nail, till her last breath. The babies dine on her for maybe four to five weeks until they’re big enough to set out into the world. There’s enough material for a Bollywood soap-opera blockbuster there! Ah, but choose your heroine with care! Ranjit Lal is an author, environmentalist and birdwatcher The story appeared in print with the headline Who is the Fittest of Them All?
