Mammals revolutionized.
Child care for.
A few primitive mammals still have eggs.
But when a kid listen, platypus emerge,
they feed directly from their mother’s skin.
All mammals stopped on milk
sucking is one of Mother Nature’s
great inventions
with food on tap.
Fathers lose another job.
They’re no help.
Instead, a remarkable bond forms
between baby and mother.
Milk can sustain
increasingly helpless young born at any time of year.
For black bears, two tiny 200 gram
cubs are born in midwinter.
It helps to be ready early for spring.
Like the cannibalistic spiders,
they feed on her over a year of gestation and suckling.
They absorb half of her
emerging from the den two months later.
It’s like a second birth.
For almost two years, she’ll protect them.
They’ll have to be shown where to go and what to eat.
Every new advance in mothering seems to have drawbacks.
It’s a 24 hour job with no help.
It must be exhausting.
The world
conspires against mothers who need sleep.
The absent fathers returned.
He wouldn’t recognize his cubs and could easily harm them.
It’s safer to stay out of the way.
It’s a shame he’s got no role.
It’s the downside of pregnancy and milk.
The Cubs play near their mother.
They’re like the early mammals, which were explorers and thinkers.
Childhood should become longer and instants less important.
It’s how mammals started building a mind that their own
cubs try everything, learning slowly for themselves.
The greatest gift a mammal mother can give them
is time.
A mule deer, mother
calving nearby doesn’t have any time.
If your potential prey birth must be quick
and babies born well developed and able to run
the calf is already alert.
The senses tuned to danger.
She automatically eats any telltale remains from the birth.
Though as a strict vegetarian, she doesn’t seem to like them
much.
A mule deer calf
must be born with specific fears.
He can’t explore and learn what is dangerous.
Wolves and coyotes and bears
could be anywhere.
The slightest sound or smell triggers fear.
Creatures
the world over are ruled by their instincts, their emotions.
