For bird watchers, the cuckoo symbolises the beginnings of spring, the bird arriving to do the thing it is known best for – brood parasitism. This is the process by which the female cuckoo craftily stalking the local nests to pick one in which to lay her eggs. The hatched cuckoo then strives to eliminate the competition for food within the nest and gets its adoptive parents to raise it as their own.

It’s a fascinating parenting strategy and is outlined in Prof Nick Davies new book Cuckoo: Cheating by Nature, and Prof Davies will be live with Sean Moncrieff today to talk about how the call of ‘cuck-oo’ is a harbinger of spring and doom in equal measure. Tune in at 2.30pm: http://www.newstalk.com/player/

Of course, the cuckoo is not the only creature in the animal kingdom to push its survival at the expense of others. While we might think of the bird’s covert surrogacy as being reprehensible, there are plenty of other animals that act with such wild abandon. Here’s five other animals that behave just as badly as the cuckoo:

• Chimpanzees

With a 95 percent genetic match to mankind, it should come as no surprise that chimps are prone to acts of senseless violence. They are known to kill other chimps to maintain territory control, but they also have been recorded suddenly grabbing infant chimps from their mother’s grasp and eating them. They share the meal between the entire group, so at least they’re not stingy about it. Researchers are unclear why the normally vegetarian primates get the sudden blood lust, but some have said they thing it has an almost ceremonial quality.

[Flickr/Michelle W]

• Ants

Known for their sense of order and teamwork, ants are also recognised as the only other species to mankind that carries out planned warfare and enslaves members of its own species. Specially selected ants usually do the actual fighting, with the victors working their way through the losers’ nest, capturing any survivors or unhatched eggs. These slaves are then either worked till they die or devoured.

• Dolphins

Don’t be fooled by their intelligence, dolphins like to kill for sport. Pity the poor porpoises who get punched to the death by pods of bottle-nose brutes. Marine biologists find it extremely hard to explain, as the porpoises are not predators of dolphins, nor do they even eat the same food source. What we do know is that they use their sonar to locate the vital organs of their prey, so they can kills with a ruthless efficiency.

[Wikipedia Commons]

• African Bat Bugs

These parasites spend their times seeking out bats to feed on, with the females requiring a blood feast in order to lay her eggs. But that’s just the beginning of their reproductive horror story – as the males pierces her abdomen to deposit sperm directly into her bloodstream, in a process known as traumatic insemination. Evolution hasn’t been kind to the female bat bug, whose best defence has been to limit the damage done by guiding the penile prong into the part of their body where it does the least harm.

[Wikipedia Commons]

• Lions

Male lions love the ladies, but the lionesses are often occupied with hunting and raising cubs. So in order to endure their lusting needs are met on a regular basis, lions eliminate anything that might get in their way – and maul the cubs to death. 

[Wikipedia Commons]