Evolutionary-adaptive and nonadaptive causes of infant attack/desertion in mammals: Toward a systematic
Kumi O Kuroda1, Yuko Shiraishi1, Kazutaka Shinozuka1
1Laboratory for Affiliative Social Behavior, RIKEN Center for Brain Science, Wako, Japan.
Insights
Mammalian infant maltreatment, including attack and desertion, can be adaptive for reproductive fitness or a failure of nurturing motivation due to inexperience or brain dysfunction. Understanding these causes aids in developing preventive measures.
Area of Science:
- Neurobiology
- Evolutionary Biology
- Animal Behavior
Background:
- Parental care is crucial for offspring survival across mammalian species.
- Behaviors resembling human child maltreatment are prevalent in nonhuman mammals.
- Neurobiological mechanisms underlying nurturing behaviors are increasingly understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review neurobiological mechanisms of mammalian nurturing behaviors.
- To classify the causes of infant attack/desertion in nonhuman mammals.
- To propose a framework for understanding mammalian infant maltreatment.
Main Methods:
- Review of recent findings on neurobiological mechanisms for nurturing.
- Classification of causes for infant attack/desertion into five categories.
- Analysis of adaptive and nonadaptive factors in mammalian infant maltreatment.
Main Results:
- Identified five categories of infant maltreatment in mammals.
- Three categories are adaptive: targeting non-offspring, low-value offspring, or under adverse conditions.
- Two categories are nonadaptive: caregiver inexperience or brain dysfunction affecting nurturing.
Conclusions:
- A comprehensive framework classifies mammalian infant maltreatment based on adaptive and nonadaptive factors.
- This framework can inform the development of tailored preventive measures for human cases.
- Animal data interpretation for humans requires caution regarding justification, generalizability, and determinism.
Abstract:
Behaviors comparable to human child maltreatment are observed widely among mammals, in which parental care is mandatory for offspring survival. This article first reviews the recent findings on the neurobiological mechanisms for nurturing (infant caregiving) behaviors in mammals. Then the major causes of attack/desertion toward infants (conspecific young) in nonhuman mammals are classified into five categories. Three of the categories are 'adaptive' in terms of reproductive fitness: (i) attack/desertion toward non-offspring; (ii) attack/desertion toward biological offspring with low reproductive value; and (iii) attack/desertion toward biological offspring under unfavorable environments. The other two are nonadaptive failures of nurturing motivation, induced by: (iv) caregivers' inexperience; or (v) dysfunction in caregivers' brain mechanisms required for nurturing behavior. The proposed framework covering both adaptive and nonadaptive factors comprehensively classifies the varieties of mammalian infant maltreatment cases and will support the future development of tailored preventive measures for each human case. Also included are remarks that are relevant to interpretation of available animal data to humans: (1) any kind of child abuse/neglect is not justified in modern human societies, even if it is widely observed and regarded as adaptive in nonhuman animals from the viewpoint of evolutionary biology; (2) group-level characteristics cannot be generalized to individuals; and (3) risk factors are neither deterministic nor irreversible.
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