[chefkd]

> "mammal mothers eating their young are relatively rare and usually occur under extreme stress or adverse conditions"

perhaps i meant to say just mammals? would be cool if neuroscience advanced enough to figure out what makes mammals specifically different but alas like Moses won't live long enough to see that day

[card_zero]

Generally, a tendency for a type of animal to eat its young correlates to a strategy of producing a lot of them. Rabbits, for instance. I'm blanking on the name of it but this is one of a pair of strategies where the other is to be long-lived - like humans, or at the extreme end, the greenland shark, which has a very low metabolism. That's the alternate way of persisting as a species: do nothing, and especially don't die.

[throwaway87651]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory

[card_zero]

That's the one! My mind was polluted with "A/B testing".

[marcosdumay]

Not only mammals, birds seem to have it from the same origin.

Also, some reptiles and fish care for their children. Some arthropod too. So it looks like reasonably easy to evolve.