By a stroke of luck, orca researchers at the northwest end of Vancouver Island witnessed an adult male commit the first whale infanticide known to science. There is already good evidence that older female killer whales help their sons acquire mates, but doing so by killing their love interests’ newborns is novel. It all went down just after noon on Dec. 2, 2016, near Ledge Point, between Malcolm Island and Vancouver Island. “It was not the kind of thing you can un-see, the image of the whales killing and passing around the dead baby are engraved in my mind,” Towers told the Columbia Valley Pioneer. Killing newborns of one’s own species, known as conspecific infanticide, is rare among mammals, but it happens, mostly among primates, carnivores and rodents, and possibly dolphins.

Source: National Post March 22, 2018 16:41 UTC