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Ranking of Animal Killers. Do any of them kill more often than humans?

Article bay
4 min readAug 14, 2023

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Biologically speaking, humans are not innate murderers. It turns out that many mammal species kill their own kind more frequently than we do.

[Photo: Petruss, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons]

Research conducted by a team from the University of Granada in Spain, led by José Maria Gómez, reveals how often animals kill members of their own species. Scientists analyzed over 1000 mammal species, seeking information about cases of killing. They then compared this data with information about human murders since the Paleolithic era. The results show that — contrary to appearances — humans do not occupy the top positions in the ranking.

The Most Dangerous Killers in the Animal Kingdom

On average, only one in three hundred mammal deaths is caused by a member of their own species. However, some species are much more aggressive. Meerkats, typically associated with sympathetic characters, rank first in this ranking. As many as one in five meerkats dies due to aggression from another meerkat.

Meerkats — [Photo: Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons]

Other species, such as chinchillas, ground squirrels, and marmots, also frequently kill their own kind. All these animals…

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