Intimate Carnivores

That's the name of the documentary I just watched on Central at 11pm. It was a gory show on cannibalism within the animal family.

Classic examples include:
The seagull - Jealous mother seagulls sneak to others' nests and destroy their eggs. They don't even let the newborn fluffy chicks off! They just swallow them whole - feathers, beaks and claws. I wonder is that pure jealousy or pure hunger.
The squirrel - Same. But their mouths are too small to swallow the newborns of other squirrels whole. So they just shred them alive with their little teeth.
The mouse - Same as hamsters, but who knows newborn mice would have so much blood in them!
The eagle - Usually sibling rivalry reduces a nest of three newborn eagles to one. The first one dies of starvation within a few days, when it loses out to its siblings in the fight of food brought back by the mother. A few months later, one of the remaining two dies for the same reason. The only surviving young eagle promptly disposes off the carcass by EATING it.
The (don't know what) fish - The female fish lays its eggs on the coral bed and the male fish takes over to fertilize them and guards the nest. While the eggs hatch, the father fish fends off naughty fishes who try to feast on the embryos. However, sometimes when the crowd of naughty fishes gets too frantic for the tired father to handle, it conveniently joins in the cannibalistic feast along with them. But I got to admit fish roe (on sushi) tastes good.
The tiger shark - Do you know that a female tiger shark can have 30 fertilised embryos in its womb, yet it only gives birth to one or two shark pups in the end? Where did the remaining potential shark pups go to? A puzzled researcher decided to unravel the msytery by catching a pregnant female shark and sadistically cutting open its womb to OBSERVE. A highly-advanced camera inserted into the fresh womb revealed a mushy white liquid with floating blood veins and egg yolks. A baby shark with beady eyes was swimming happily through the mess and gobbling the egg yolks. There were three or four developed shark babies too but apparently they had died. Wow, shark pups sure have a nutritious meal of eggs and fish even before being born!
The chimpanzee - This is the worst. Even the researcher finds it disturbing. The male chimpanzee can all of a sudden snatch a baby chimp from its surprised mother, throw it around to his fellows, and finally tear it apart and relax in one corner munching on the little fingers. This is not right. The researcher cited the reason as that the father chimp suspecting the baby chimp is not his legitimate child, so jolly well just eat it up. But still, that's not right!

As the saying goes, only the fittest survives. Leaves much room for thought.