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Journalism of Courage
In the animal world, as in ours, there are cosy nuclear families, with two doting parents taking care of the brood, there are single moms, single dads, foster moms, and joint families, as also gloriously irresponsible parents.
Among insects, the mom often just lays her eggs at a location ensuring a suitable food supply for her brood (which could be single or numerous) and disappears. Thus butterflies lay their eggs on a plant they know their fussy caterpillars will accept and off they go. Solitary wasps famously, sting other insects and spiders, anaesthetising them, and lay their egg/s on the feebly conscious victim, ensuring their young have fresh meat when they hatch out. Ants, termites and bees live in enormous joint families where big mama (the queen) enlists her sisters to do all the work while at the same time, ensuring by way of pheromones that they will not be interested in boys (drones). Baby care is of paramount importance, as can be seen when an ant nest is disturbed, and all the workers scurry forth carrying precious eggs to safer places.
Some spider moms are doting parents (dads are usually eaten by moms) and will carry and guard their babies — up to a point. If they don’t scatter soon enough and she is hungry, she will happily dine off them. (As the siblings will do each other!) Dragonfly to-be-dads will considerately escort their partners to the underwater plants where she will lay her eggs — to ensure no other macho dragonfly tries hanky-panky with her — and the eggs she lays are his and his alone.
There are several species of fish where daddy-day care is the order of the day! Lady seahorses impregnate their gentlemen by laying their eggs in a special tummy pouch he has and he takes care of the developing babies and eventually has contractions and gives birth (to sometimes hundreds of tiny-tot seahorses). Apparently, the mom does hang around to see that all is well. In some species of fish like the cichlid, doting parents will ‘brood’ the eggs in their mouths and even after the babies emerge, will call them back in and let them out again once the coast is clear. (And you can imagine them yelling, ‘Come home, or the bogey fish will get you!’)
Among birds, the larger species, like the raptors, and storks and cranes, whose young take longer to mature, both parents feed and bring up the young in a cosy nuclear family. Not too cosy because sometimes, when times are hard, the eldest chick will happily kill and consume a younger weaker sibling with full parental approval. (Sometimes, even the parents will do this, to ensure that at least one ladla beta or beti survives!) But such couples usually stick together for good though sometimes divorces do occur — usually when no babies are around. Many species of birds believe in philandering and will happily make out with strangers of their species just to ensure that their genes do get passed on, whether in their own home or someone else’s. The baya weaver is a serial bigamist, building magnificent edifices for as many ladies as he can — settling each down in her lovely home, before starting work on the next. (Of course, it’s the ladies that have the final say.) The lovely grumpy burrowing owl of the plains of North and South America have a wonderfully hippie lifestyle — with partners being exchanged freely and baby owlets happily making the whole colony their home.
Koels and cuckoos make wicked parents — they have their reckless flings — and then deposit the result of their wantonness in the homes of other (usually smaller) birds when they are not looking. Even the sab-janta crows fall for this ruse and you can imagine the trauma caused to tiny-tot warbler parents who suddenly find their ‘baby’ is actually a monster into whose open mouth they will easily fit (forget about the caterpillar they have brought for dinner!) and who has a dinosaur’s appetite!
Among mammals, some members of the Canidae (wolves and wild dogs) are famous for having both parents and other family members collectively look after and feed their cubs. When painted wolves set out on a hunt, they’ll leave a puppy-sitter-cum-guard back at the den, and when they return, the kill will be shared by all.
With big cats and bears, it’s usually a single-mom family situation. The father of the cubs has very little to do with cub care — though in lion pride, the father does protect the family. Also, a lion mom will, along with her sisters, have and bring up their families together, with the babies helping themselves to the most convenient milk bar at hand, making it a happy joint family. Happily, some macho tiger dudes have been emancipated enough to bring up their cubs in the unfortunate occurrence of their partner’s deaths. But even doting big cat moms will ruthlessly turn out their daughters and sons from their territories, once they become independent after two years or so.
Herbivores are famous harem keepers — with a single (overworked, oversexed) male having to ensure that his harem of females remain loyal to him and don’t sneak off with any roadside Romeo!
Elephants (among the wisest of all mammals) live in matriarchal societies, with a grandma in charge, and her sisters and daughters looking after the babies. Adolescent hooligan males are shown the door once they get too big for their boots.
As for us, it’s best we don’t get between the parents and offspring of all the above creatures, come what may!
