fresh box reviews of numerous mammalian species demonstrate a shockingly excessive frequency of infanticide - the killing of unweaned or in a different way maternally established offspring. equally, reviews of birds, fish, amphibians, and invertebrates show egg and larval mortality in those species, a phenomenon at once analogous to infanticide in mammals. during this assortment, Hausfater and Hrdy draw jointly paintings on animal and human infanticide and position those stories in a vast evolutionary and comparative perspective.Infanticide provides the theoretical heritage and taxonomic distribution of infanticide, infanticide in nonhuman primates, infanticide in rodents, and infanticide in people. It examines heavily intercourse allocation and intercourse ratio idea, surveys the phylogeny of mammalian interbirth durations, and reports information on assets of egg and larval mortality in a number of invertebrate and reduce vertebrate species. facing infanticide in nonhuman primates, chapters significantly study information on infanticide in langurs and its broader theoretical implications. through reviewing resources of boy or girl mortality in populations of small mammals and new laboratory analyses of the reasons and results of infanticide, this paintings explores such concerns because the ontogeny of infanticide, proximate cues of babies and adult females which elicit infanticidal habit in men, the genetical foundation of infanticide, and the hormonal determinants.Hausfater and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, via their collection of fabrics for this ebook, review the frequency, reasons, and serve as of infanticide. ancient, ethnographic, and up to date info on infanticide are surveyed. "Infanticide" summarizes present study at the evolutionary origins and proximate causation of infanticide in animals and guy. As such it is going to be essential analyzing for anthropologists and behavioral biologists in addition to ecologists, psychologists, demographers, and epidemiologists.