Citation

Muller MS, Porter ET, Grace JK, Awkerman JA, Birchler KT, Gunderson AR, Schneider EG, Westbrock MA, Anderson DJ. Auk 2011; 128(4): 615-619.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, American Ornithologists' Union, Publisher University of California Press)

DOI

10.1525/auk.2011.11008

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The "cycle of violence" hypothesis implicates child abuse as a cause of later violent behavior via social transmission between generations. It receives mixed support from human research and has prompted the study of nonhuman models with comparable abuse behaviors. The underlying biology of child abuse remains a controversial subject, perhaps partly because in non-human animals similar behavior occurs relatively rarely in wild populations. The Nazca Booby (Sula granti), a colonial seabird, provides a nonhuman model in which maltreatment of non-familial young is widespread under normal living conditions. Essentially all adults show social attraction at some point in their lives to the offspring of other parents, often with a sexual and/or aggressive motivation. Here we show a correlation between the degree to which a young bird is victimized by such adults and its own infliction of maltreatment later in life. The results provide the first evidence from a non-human of socially transmitted maltreatment directed toward unrelated young in the wild.