Cannibalism is fairly common among animals. Lions eat other lions, bears eat other bears, and chimpanzees eat other chimpanzees. This does not necessarily happen because food is scarce. Such incidents occur even when plenty of food from other sources is available. In lions, for example, a male lion sometimes kills and eats the cubs of a lioness who has no mate to protect her. He does this because the female will not mate while she has cubs, but will mate after they have died. For some species, cannibalism is extremely common. For example, about one fifth of a tiger salamander’s diet consists of other tiger salamanders. The lesson we can draw is that we should not derive our moral standards from the behaviour of other animals, but instead choose something better. If we considered eating meat normal only because other animals do it, that would mean cannibalism was normal too.
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