According to a recent study of animated movies, researchers found that characters in cartoons and animated movies are 2.5 times more likely to die than those found in adult dramas. Many of those victims—five times as many, in fact, as found in those live-action dramas—are parents.

“Just because a film has a cute clownfish, a princess or a beautiful baby deer as its main character doesn’t necessarily mean there won’t be murder and mayhem,” says Ian Colman, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Ottowa (Canada).

Colman and his associates researched the 45 highest-grossing animated films for their study, matching them against the highest-grossing adult films for the same year. Colman found that about two-thirds of the cartoons showed a death, compared with about half of adult dramas. (LiveScience)

Paul Asay has written for The Washington Post, Christianity Today, Beliefnet.com and The (Colorado Springs) Gazette. He writes about culture for PluggedIn and wrote the Batman book God on the Streets of Gotham (Tyndale). He recently collaborated with Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family, on his book The Good Dad. He lives in Colorado Springs with wife, Wendy, and his two children. Check out his entertainment blog or follow him on Twitter.