Bringing up Baby - A tribute to animal parents

"Bringing up Baby"
A tribute to animal parents
By Dorothy Hoffman

Eighty million years ago - give or take a few centuries - a good mother watched over her little ones while dad bravely defended the nest and tracked down the family's dinner. A typical cozy domestic scene, except that the mother in question is a three-ton dinosaur known as maiasaura - "good mother lizard."

Parenting Styles

The parenting styles of our prehistoric pals is still a hotly debated issue among today's dinosaur experts. Not everyone believes the maiasaura was well named. But whether mom nurtured and protected her young or left them to hatch on their own into the brave new Jurassic world, we're sure to find some modern-day critters practicing the same child-care methods today.

Bringing up baby in the animal kingdom takes many forms, from the sea turtles ,who've barely hatched their way into a hostile world before they're engaged in a race for their lives to the sea, to our fellow primates, who keep close ties with their parents right through adolescence. There are no bad parents in the animal kingdom, according to naturalist Janine Benyus "Beastly Behaviors.... but some aren't exactly candidates for parent of the year, either.

Take the elephant seal. Life is no beach for these pups. Infancy is a delicate balance between gorging themselves on as much of mother's milk as they can snatch and dodging enormous bull Seal Pup seals who rampage through the densely populated beach communities, oblivious to all but challenging males. More than a few hapless pups are crushed under the weight of the charging contestants. Mother's milk runs out in about three weeks, and the youngsters are on their own.

In contrast, avian parents are generally fiercely protective of the nest. Mothers sometimes distract predators by running away from the nest, and all the adults in a large bird colony will surround intruders in a shrieking, angry flurry of beaks and feathers guaranteed to scare off all but the most foolhardy. "Imprinting" is a popular bird behavior that helps keep potentially wayward hatchling on track. They simply imprint on the first thing they see when they break out of their shells - usually the mother bird - and follow it everywhere. Dad often lends a wing or two to the domestic routines, rounding up tasty worms, warming the eggs while mom takes a break, and educating the little ones in the ways of the world.

Day Care for Critters

Community day care arrangements are fairly common in a number of species - flamingos, penguins, giraffes, dolphins, and even crocodiles, to name a few. Newborn dolphins travel in such tight formation with their mothers they look like one animal to predators. Close relatives often relieve the mother from her intense childcare chores, and the young learn to interact by playing together in these watery nurseries. The kids are weaned at 18 months, but they frequently hang around home for up to six years before striking out on their own.

Animal Life-styles: Family Snapshots

Allomothering - Naturalist Cynthia Moss has spent years observing elephants. All family members in their social groups help educate the youngster, creating a warm environment with lots of contact, encouragement, and protection. Extended families provide plenty of opportunity to learn through play, direction, and imitation. The young females, who seem to be very attracted to the babies, spend a lot of time taking care of them.

Cynthia Moss describes one dramatic example of this nurturing behavior, known as "allomothering," in a young female elephant, Enid, with the crippled calf (Ely) of the group's matriarch:

"She would not leave him, and helped take care of him, and he recovered, miraculously. That bond between Enid and Ely remains to this day. She follows him around, she stands over him when he's sleeping, she goes after him if he wanders off and brings him back, and if he cries out in a distress call, it's always Enid who comes."
[from Wildlife Conservation, March/April 1993]

Dinner Time - "In the chilly windswept plains of Patagonia, you may find a burrow about the size of a large rabbit hole . . . . Watch from a few yards away and you will see an elegant rodent, about the size and shape of a hare, but with long stilt-like legs, step daintily towards the hole, nose lifted warily. Locally the people call this animal a mara . . . . [The female] will suddenly whistle a call and out of the hole come a dozen youngsters which bustle eagerly about her, groping with their muzzles for her teats. She skips and twists among them, sniffing their hind-quarters, until at last she finds the two she seeks, her own young, and leads them away to the shade of a bush and there lets them suckle."
[From The Trials of Life, David Attenborough]

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A Family Outing - A family of shrews out for a stroll is a strange sight. With the mother at the head of the line, each baby shrew latches its teeth onto the tail of the sibling in front, forming a snake-like caravan that scurries along the ground, breaks up for feeding and exploring, and reassembles at the slightest hint of danger.

Canine Mothering - Roger Caras describes the irrepressible mothering instincts of his bloodhound Trinity, in A Dog Is Listening': "She was the broodiest animal I have ever met . . . . When her puppies arrived she was attentive and always showed deep concern for their welfare. The strange thing was that when the time came to get the puppies onto solid food Trinity did none of the warning-away things other bitches just naturally do. We kept two of the puppies . . . and even when those two puppies were as big as she was . . . she worried about them day and night. If they tussled and made squealing noises she flew to them and examined them for signs of injury. She slept with one eye and both ears open. She listened for the slightest sound of distress. It was an amazing display of an instinctive pattern that wouldn't turn off."

Under the skin - or fur, feathers, or scales - all parents are pretty much alike. It's all about bringing up baby.