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The 6 Biggest Assholes in the Animal Kingdom

By Juan Arteaga November 10, 2008 749,256 views
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Hippy types will often quote the famous line that "man is the only species that kills its own." Of course, any cursory glance at Animal Planet will tell you this is complete bullshit.

But it's not just that animals are mindless savages--and they are--it's that some of them are just straight-up douchebags. Such as:

#6.
Ants

Ants are famous for hard work and being able to lift many times their body weight, making them the perfect heroes of an Ayn Rand novel, or the perfect working drone of communism depending on who's telling the story.

Why Are They Assholes?

Ants are the only species besides humans that carry out wars and enslave their own. And by enslave we mean pulling out the ant whips and putting the other guy to work against his will.

When they're not doing that, they like to tear each other limb from limb.

Less violent ants prefer to fight their battles via choreographed display fights where specially chosen ants have something like a dance-off to decide which side wins. It's basically like the movie Bring It On, except it ends with the losing team in chains or eaten (which would have improved that movie massively).

The victors raid the other nest, capture any survivors and steal all the eggs. Survivors and newborn ants are then forced to work for the victors' nest as long as they live; or at least until their new masters get a craving for some fresh slave ant, and devour them.

#5.
Lions

Ah, the lion. The noblest of animals, always sitting majestically on top of some rock, overseeing his dominion and protecting the pride and so on. Lions are even used in reference to Jesus in the Bible, and Aslan is basically a furry Lion Christ in Narnia.

Why Are They Assholes?

In technical terms, lions are what Samuel L. Jackson would call "motherfuckers." If there is one thing lions love to do, it's moms. Unfortunately, female lions don't like to put out when they're raising a kid. So, when the lions want some but the kids are in the way, they walk up to the little brats and maul them to death. Then, to add insult to injury, they bone the mother ten ways till Sunday.


Pow!

To put this into perspective, imagine your mom having sex with the kid who stole your lunch money in school, but replace "stole lunch money" with "turned you into a bleeding stump of a man." Surprisingly, this means Scar from Disney's The Lion King is the most accurate portrayal of a lion, despite all the singing, dancing and Whoopie Goldberg. You know who should be glad this kind of thing is not acceptable among humans? Angelina Jolie's kids.


This is how humans see the world.


This is how lions see the world.

#4.
Cuckoos

The cuckoo is the only bird famous for living inside Swiss clocks and gently singing every hour to help their human friends tell time. Of course, those are made of wood. The real cuckoo birds are more like Invasion of the Body Snatchers mixed with The Sopranos.

Why Are They Assholes?

Cuckoo bird parents like to use something called Brood Parasitism to raise their kids, which sounds like something involving alien monsters bursting out of their chests. The reality isn't all that much better.

What happens is female cuckoos lay their eggs in some other birds' nest, where the little baby cuckoo, already born in full-asshole-mode, will try to get rid of the nest owners' real chicks and eggs by kicking them out of the nest, sending them plunging to their doom. That way, the nest owner will feed the intruding little psychopath instead of actually raising their own young.

You may be wondering why a bird would raise a cuckoo chick that obviously doesn't look anything like his real chicks. Perhaps you're imagining the male bird suspecting that the female has been having an affair with an old high school flame, never daring to confront her about it as he slowly sinks into alcoholism before blowing his own brains out with his old army pistol.


Okay, honey, I am going to ask you just one more time. Have you been porking the UPS guy?

Well, no. Most birds are just really fucking stupid and they figure that if it's in their nest, it has feathers and it's asking for food, then it's probably theirs.

Some birds, though, are a bit smarter and try to refuse to raise cuckoo chicks by either throwing away cuckoo eggs or even completely abandoning their own nests if all that is left is a cuckoo egg inside. And that's when they get visited by the Cuckoo Mafia. Hey, don't look at us, it's actually called the Mafia Hypothesis.

If a bird refuses to raise a cuckoo, then it gets visited by some adult cuckoos who will beat the crap out of them, trash the nest and possibly kill a few of their young in the process until the other bird wises up and stops asking questions the next time one of his kids look a little bit different. Capisce?

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194 Comments

Dolphins are also kinky sex maniacs. Dolphin foreplay involves hitting, ramming into, and biting the female in question, making dolphins less like Aquaman and more like Mike Tyson.


Wheelz, lord of all he surveys (would you like to see a new movie starring George Went?)

7/4/2009 7:45:22 AM
Wheelz

What makes ants even scarier is that 99% of each colony is female, so they're basicly Amazon wars.

I think the Asian Giant Hornet & African Killer Bee deserve a shared place on this list. They're guilty of the same s**t.

Dolphins also screw for fun, but they're total racists. Speaking of racists, I hear Chimps actively hunt & eat certain species of Monkey.

6/8/2009 3:37:39 AM
likalaruku

There's a video out there of the killer dolphins some tourists took. The thought the dolphins were playing, until they showed it to a marine biologist. He nearly wet himself when he found out what they had. It was the only known tape of dolphins tossing a porpoise around and beating it to death.

6/1/2009 3:26:57 PM
LexTaliones

f*****g ants

http://theworldisretarded.wordpress.com/

5/31/2009 7:12:28 PM
twir13

Man, I was SURE the praying mantis would be some where on this list.

5/31/2009 9:47:07 AM
BluMizu

The ants having a dance-off instead of fighting is more of a West Side Story thing, really. Hey, there's an idea! West Side Story for ants! I'm thinking John Travolta in an ant costume...can't look worse than his Battlefield Earth outfit.

5/31/2009 9:09:43 AM
feralboy12

HA! i told you! I SO EFFING TOLD YOU! ants are effing scary and will take over the world one day... its all right here!!! watch my friends as you all get taken down by the mighty ants, and all the while im missing because the aliens have saved me because im so effing smart!! lol... damn you friends, not reading cracked!

5/27/2009 6:32:38 PM
Lost4ngel

a lot of birds do the whole 'IMA TAKE OVER YOUR NEST... YOU BETTER FEED ME' thing

5/27/2009 6:29:54 PM
Lost4ngel

You can add the Knight Anole to this list. Most anoles are about 8 inches long and basically harmless to everything but crickets, roaches, etc. Knight anoles can reach over two feet long and attack snakes out of spite. Or anything resembling a snake, like a garden hose. As soon as it sees its victim, the lizard jumps on the snake and basically rips its head off...before leaving. Knight anoles don't prey on snakes, they eat insects and smaller anoles (including young knight anoles that are to stupid to run like hell)
The accepted theory is that since a large snake can and probably will eat a knight anole if it can catch one (actually, a big if), knight anoles kill the snake before it gets a chance, not giving a s**t about whether the 'snake' is actually a threat, as many mangled garden hoses can attest.
And it's not like snakes normally have a good chance of eating them anyway; knight anoles are fairly large, have sharp teeth, a serrated keel on their tails, sharp claws, can change color a bit (like all species of anole) and can run scross water like a basilisk if it's threatened enough. But no, their first instinct on seeing anything long and skinny is to rip its head off.

4/26/2009 10:14:00 PM
Sligking

Alexicon, Cats don't kill things for fun. Domestic cats repeatedly catch and release small animals (Cat-and-mouse) because cats in captivity are well-fed. Cats recieve two different hunting signals: Movement of small animals (mice, bugs, lizards) triggers and impulse to chase and pounce on the prey, but the signal to actually KILL the prey is driven by hunger. So the cats sees something move and pounces on it, but isn't hungary; so it just stops caring about whatever the prey is, and relaxes its grip. This allows the prey to wriggle free. At which point it tries to dart away, and the movement once again triggers the pouncing reflex, starting the whole cycle over again. This cycle eventually ends either when the prey can fully escape, the cat gets hungry and eats it or, usually, the prey dies from the stress it's being put under.
So cats aren't really mean, they're just dumb.

3/30/2009 8:31:13 PM
astrolounge

Chimps love meat... they actively hunt several species, including large rodents and colobus monkeys, for the purpose of getting meat to eat.

3/25/2009 9:43:02 PM
powerfulpup

Chimps will also attack the eyes, hands, feet, and genitals when fighting.

3/25/2009 6:05:35 PM
girlfawkes

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3/25/2009 9:27:40 AM
caochong

"what's that Flipper?...Little Timmy is in trouble?...And you just bludgeoned a porpoise to death for no reason whatsoever?...Again?...What the hell is wrong with you?!??!"

2/19/2009 2:36:23 PM
Weblas

I think the only way we can answer that last question there about the chimps is to get two ourselves. One would be for raising as he would grow up to wear little clothes and go on adventures with me (to help me get laid). He could also drive my car when I'm really stoned. The other one we would cook and eat.

1/12/2009 9:21:39 AM
Random240

Male tigers have been known to bite the heads off of tiger cubs in order to get the mother to come in to estrus again.

12/17/2008 9:45:47 AM
demografik

Lark Buntings: These little feathered assholes form rape mobs that chase down fertile females from other males' territories and try to copulate with them. This is a fairly new discovery headed up by Bruce Lyon of UC Santa Cruz, so there's no references to link yet. But seriously, two words: rape mobs. They even alter the coloration of their plumage while they're doing it to make them look more masculine and aggressive.

Rape mobs!

12/16/2008 6:04:31 PM
emote_control

When I clicked on this article, I thought: "Humans háve to be on top!" Turns out there not. C'mon folks, after writting the awesome Monkeysphere article, humans just hád to be on top of this list.

By the way, dolphins depicted as a mix between Buddha and Aquaman? I think Aquaman would've killed someone for the awesome superpower to be able to locate internal organs with sonar. Same with zombies.

O and ants aren't douchebags, they're just friggin' awesome. I mean, if we would even be 10% like ants we would've conquered the galaxy by now ;)

12/15/2008 9:51:40 AM
Cowabungaa

Chimps also go to war :P they usually go in groups of 5-ish into enemy territory to find and kill members of the pack that live there.

Also cats kill for fun. Pretty sure other some other animals do it as well.

Ps : Dolphins are so smart they know we are about the same level on the Bastard-scale and they like us for it.
That's why they save us from time to time :P

12/15/2008 6:58:38 AM
Alexicon

Lol, love it, the two closet things to us in intelligence are also gigantic douchebags to everything else around them.

You see? It's freakin' evolution!

11/20/2008 12:26:06 AM
Entaris

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