Are there single parents in the animal kingdom? | Eye News,The Indian Express
Be it watching over their young or claiming the skies, birds and the bears have much to teach us
Parenting plays a vital role in the lives of most living creatures and here again, even the casual observer will note the similarities between us and animals and birds. There are doting parents on both sides, where both parents share the duties of child-rearing equitably. In birds, both parents usually have the same plumage. Single-parent families are hugely popular in the animal kingdom and it’s usually the mother who brings up her babies single-handedly or with the help of her sisters and female cousins. Some animal-dads (such as lions) may not partake of the daily diaper-changing, but will be around to keep a glinting eye on his harem and its cubs and occasionally help bring down a big kill.
Something like single-dads with visiting rights and having to pay alimony. (Lion dads do not begrudge this as it is their genes they are protecting.) A lot of animal and bird couples separate after a single season, matching up with new partners for the next one. Some however, like the sarus crane have lifelong fidelity to one another (and are so admired by us).
The amount of TLC lavished on the young also depends on the species: many animals – especially reptiles and insects and some birds – leave this either to Mother Nature to deal with or with foster parents. A king cobra mom leaves after laying her eggs because she knows she would instinctively eat the babies when they hatched. Sea turtles lovingly bury their eggs on a moonlit beach and then return to the ocean. Cuckoos are famous for laying their eggs in the nests of tiny warblers. Well, we abandon babies, too, or send them to foster care… Some spider and scorpion moms may carry their babies on their backs, but only for a while. Even the big mamas – tigers and lions – will turn out their young, once they graduate to independent killing. In raptor families, during tough times, the first-born chick will often kill its younger sibling with its mom’s tacit acceptance just as desperate human moms have abandoned their newborns in garbage dumps or even killed them.
But, usually, animal moms make the fiercest most ferocious protectors of their babies: no one dare come between a mama-bear and her cubs not even a dada-bear twice her size. Thankfully, most human moms behave in a similar fashion (often defending the indefensible in their children). Also, we can tell – say by the way an elephant mama gently urges her clumsy baby to its feet, or a lioness lavishes attention on her cubs – that in their world as in ours, moms would rather spend time with their babies than their partners. Of course, there are some moms who would rather be clubbing or playing rummy and the children pay the price. Joint families also exist in the animal kingdom in hyenas and elephants, for instance, where they are led by the matriarch.
And hallelujah, just like in rare human cases, it is the single dad that brings up the kids, in several species of fish (and the seahorse) and birds like the painted snipe, for instance. Even macho tigers have been known to do this – if misfortune befalls the mother of his cubs. A dada gorilla (or was it a chimpanzee?) was shown in a documentary gently taking care of an orphaned baby.
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