Ahead of Mother’s Day, how these moms ensure the safety of their brood

Tigress with her cubs (Source:Wikimedia)

Many years ago, while watching a black kite family with two chicks, I was dive-bombed by the irate mother. The nest was, maybe a hundred metres away, on a peepul tree, at eye level with the veranda. The mom would slip off the nest, cunningly go around the building, gain height and then scream down at me, talons out, passing by so close I could feel the wind through her wings. And once the babies left home (well, one chick ate its younger sibling!) she reverted to normal behaviour and posed no threat. And no, there was no remonstration when the chick ate its sibling. And alas, with us? If you dare whack your younger brother or sister one (usually deservedly), see what your mom and sometimes dad do to you!

But all this cosseting soon makes way for school. The young, no matter how spoilt, have to learn how to stand on their own two feet, to hunt and kill and to find food and there is usually a time cap for this: usually around 1.5 to 2 years for female tiger cubs, less for their brothers. It’s amazing how, obedient most young are (of course, there are rebels in every brood too) and obey the subtlest of commands: a low call, a flick of the tail. Try training your puppy by wagging your fingers. They learn by observation and imitation. With tigers and lions, there is that final graduation lesson, where mom brings an incapacitated victim – a gazelle fawn say – and lets her brood finish the job.

Once she is confident that her cubs can look after themselves, she simply leaves, without looking back, while the cubs watch (and search for her) in dismay… But soon her sons will leave, seeking out their own territories far away, while her daughters will carve out their own places nearer by, and if mamma does a really good job, will one day, challenge her for her territory and even drive her out. With some species of spiders, mom will zealously guard her nest case and her hundreds of spiderlings but if she is too hungry, she will cannibalise them (as do the siblings). Or there is the opposite extreme, in times of hardship, she will offer herself up as a meal for her babies.

Elephants running in a stream. (Source:Wikimedia)

With elephants, it’s a little different: Here each family is ruled by a matriarch and a baby girl enjoys thorough spoiling by its mom, sisters, aunts and grandmother. Young hellion bulls are asked to leave the herd when they begin to throw their weight around. With orang-utans, graduation may take seven years, and for us, 21 if not forever!

Baby birds simply leave the nest once they are able to fly, while some like sparrows and other passerines (perching birds) need 24×7 feeding and cleaning, others, like waders and waterfowl are able to feed themselves soon after hatching and only need their moms (and dads) for protection.

Then there are moms who never see their babies at all: turtles that swim the vast oceans, and return to the same beaches they were born on, laboriously lay their eggs in the sand and return to the ocean with nary a look behind. But then, only one in a thousand of the babies survive to adulthood, and that could be heart-wrenching for any mom. Insect moms may lay thousands of eggs and well, looking after one baby is hard enough but thousands? The lady king cobra will leave her nest as soon as her eggs hatch – because she is cannibalistic – and they might end up being on her menu!

And then, mamma-mia, there are those moms, who modern moms must love: they leave all the mothering to the dads. The most famous among these are the seahorses, where the mom deposits her eggs into her husband’s tummy pouch and lets him get on with the pregnancy and birth while she looks on, or maybe swims away. A lady jacana will lay her eggs and make her husband sit on them and hatch them while she goes looking for more gentlemanly company, fighting other ladies for the handsomest hunk. There is one species of frog, where the eggs are laid on leaves lying low over water and zealously guarded until they hatch by the kick-boxing father! In some species of fish, again the mom simply lays her eggs, and lets the dad do all the feeding and protecting needed; in one case he hides his babies in his mouth! Spit us out dad, we want mom, you have terrible breath!