Photo By AWeith – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51548912
Dear Readers, a dear friend of mine has recently had a baby, and it feels like such a wonderful reminder of the circle of life. I wasn’t able to have children of my own, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t need outlets for my maternal instincts, and it seems like I’m not the only one. You may have read that a polar bear mother in Northern Canada was originally spotted with one cub, but now seems to have acquired another one – it’s not clear whether the mother of the new cub has died, or if the little one has just somehow gotten lost. However, having a mum to teach it how to hunt will be an important factor in the cub’s survival. Sometimes the maternal instinct is so strong that it overrides all that pesky stuff about genetic inheritance that social Darwinists are so fond of. Polar bears normally have twin cubs, so this extra mouth to feed shouldn’t overtax the mother too much.
Interestingly, domestic cats will often rear their kittens alongside other mothers. When I was fostering for Cat Protection, one of the most extraordinary stories was of a ‘mother’ cat who had been caring for three young kittens. On closer examination, the ‘mother’ turned out to be a tom cat – he obviously couldn’t feed the kittens on milk but he cleaned them, protected them and found them food. He wasn’t the father of the kittens, but clearly he had a well-developed paternal instinct.
Primates will sometimes ‘adopt’ young members of their own species, and sometimes even other species: back in 2004, a capuchin monkey was found looking after a young marmoset, which she carried around. She cracked open nuts for her ‘baby’ and fed it the small pieces. Locals said that the marmoset had been with the capuchin for weeks, and that it the marmoset was not a pet or a tame animal, but a member of a troop of the small monkeys who shared the habitat with the capuchins.
So, there are many, many ways to put all that nurturing instinct to use. So many youngsters, of all species, need a good mother, and so many of us have a lot of love to give. For me, at least, it’s worth thinking about how to put those feelings to good use.