In a way yes, and no. The primary goal of all animals is survival. So that means animals will do anything to live another day and reproduce. At the same time, nature is a beautiful self-regulating system. I think one of the primary reasons of overpopulation today is the mass production of food. Increasing food source=increasing population. Nature regulates over population by having an interconnected food supply. If there are too many lions, there won't be enough impala to feed them all. Also, most animals are vicious when they need food or when they need to assert their dominance over their territory/mate. There are many instances of lions and warthogs lying near each other in the watering hole without hostility.
So well spoken +rep Agriculture is what brought homo sapiens to where it is today, 7 billion members. It was at the point when we said, "We will have unlimited food" that we took the power of "the gods" out of their hands and into our own; the power to choose what lives and what dies. We've essentially been controlling evolution for the last 10-12 thousand years.
There have been studies that have looked into homicide as an evolutionary behavior, but they have all had inconclusive results, as homicide usually results endangering oneself (retaliation etc). Also, this notion that it's only "human" is a somewhat vague and false premise. Being "human" is a whole range of things; mostly based upon the cognitive upbringing. If we are constantly being told this myth (as in mythical story) that humans are the most superior beings to live, we will believe that. But we need an explanation to our short-comings, so we have a twist that humans are inherently flawed in that myth. There are societies that don't have this fascination with killing, but we have effectively ostracized them as "backwards" and "savage"
Historian Jared Diamond says that the development of agriculture may have been "The worst mistake in the history of the human race". The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race
the development of agriculture also lead to: not fucking starving to death by the time you were 5. seems like a zero sum trade to me
all the modern hunter-gatherers seem to be doing pretty well, so long as their homes aren't cut down for your toilet paper.
yes, it's really hard to find food when... the forest doesn't grow. It's so much easier to not starve when the plants you grow, don't grow. Also, agriculture introduced plagues, famine, and a bundle of other crap including ruining soil. The Hadza modern day hunter-gatherers^
Hmm, many kids in the third world still starve to death by age 5, those countries farm as well. Anybody with any knowledge of science knows that increase in food supply=increase in population. And agriculture was used much before the agricultural revolution, just not on the same scale. This totalitarian agricultural system lead to huge gains in population, which caused the farmers to invade bordering lands to make room for themselves. This has been continuing to the present; we are slowly talking away bits and pieces of the Amazon from the tribes who have lived there for thousands of years. You do realize that we produce more than enough food for the entire world today, and we have been for quite a long time. We have been increasing the food supply exponentially, but we still have starvation. The population is never constant, so it makes no sense on increasing population's dependent variable. Instead, humans should try to share what we have now and then slowly shift towards alternative methods and see what works best. Also, being a libertarian, you should realize that our current agricultural system leads to massive centralization of power; a handful of companies (Montsanto, Cargill) have enormous shares in our food supply. Why should we really need a third person to rely on when we can have enough food just by living off what nature has given us.