Viewed this way, not only does a male lion lack the mental capacity to understand whether or not he is the father of a cub, he almost certainly does not comprehend that the world contains such a thing as “fathers”.ĭunsworth has written a couple of lengthy popular articles exploring the implications of her idea – this one, published by Aeon in 2017, is a must-read – but she says the feedback she has received from colleagues and from non-scientists has been mixed. “It’s such a profound idea that it changes everything, to my mind,” says Dunsworth. They lack what Dunsworth has dubbed our “reproductive consciousness”. But, as she told me when I discussed the idea with her recently, there is simply no strong evidence that any other animal species understands the link between sex and babies. Eventually, she concluded we do so simply because it is the way we, as humans, think – and we assume it’s the way non-human animals think, too. The implications here are that these animals recognise that sex leads to babies, and they have some sense of whether or not they were the progenitor of the infants they encounter.ĭunsworth has spent several years exploring why we use this sort of language when we talk about animals. A 2016 research paper exploring male parental care among mammals states that some species – the American beaver, for example – will help care for offspring, but that such behaviour is most likely to evolve “ when males gain greater certainty of paternity”.

As TV documentary narrators explain, the young male is making sure that “ he won’t be wasting his time protecting cubs that aren’t his own”.īiologists, too, sometimes use similar language. Shortly after his victory, the new alpha may systematically kill all of the cubs in what is now “his” pride – and we think we know why. Consider, for instance, a situation in which a young male lion deposes the pride’s alpha male.

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