FILIAL cannibalism – eating one’s own offspring – is hardly the most caring thing a parent can do, but ironically may have helped the evolution of parental care.
That’s the message from a computer model which analysed how cannibalism and parental caring could evolve. “What comes out is that they can co-evolve for different reasons, under different conditions,” says Michael Bonsall at the University of Oxford, who developed the model with Hope Klug of the University of Florida at Gainesville.
The pair devised a hypothetical egg-laying species, with hatchlings that developed into juveniles -which could benefit from care – before reaching adulthood.…
