Research: Animal Parenting Styles

During my meeting with Tom yesterday, he mentioned the possibility of researching how various animals cope with single parenting, orphans, and so on. This idea was very appealing to me, especially because it seems that most animals are single parents, and they do just fine. Of course, those animals are completely different from me, but I can relate to them on some base level. So, I took a closer look at a few animals, two of which I will discuss below. For some of the animals I looked at, single parenting is natural, for others it is something that can be overcome, and for a few, it could mean the end.

1. The Emperor Penguin

First of all, I'm a big fan of the film March of the Penguins. If you haven't seen it, you are really missing out. Emperor Penguins are amazing majestic creatures, and the care that they provide to their young is so selfless that it puts some human parents to shame. Here is an excerpt from a Wikipedia article that goes into some detail on the Penguins' breeding/parenting habits: "Emperor Penguins use a particular spot as their breeding ground because it is on ice that is solid year round and there is no danger of the ice becoming too soft to support the colony...At the beginning of Antarctic Summer, the breeding ground is only a few hundred meters away from the open water where the penguins can feed. However, by the end of summer, the breeding ground is over 100 kilometres (62 mi) away from the nearest open water. In order to reach it, all the penguins of breeding age must traverse this great distance. The penguins practice serial monogamy during each breeding season. The female lays a single egg, and the co-operation of the parents is needed if the chick is to survive. After the female lays the egg, she transfers it to the feet of the waiting male with a minimal exposure to the elements, as the intense cold will kill the developing embryo. The male tends to the egg when the female returns to the sea, now even further away, both in order to feed herself and to obtain extra food for feeding her chick when she returns. She has not eaten in two months and by the time she leaves the hatching area, she will have lost a third of her body weight. For an additional two months, the males huddle together for warmth, and incubate their eggs. They endure temperatures approaching (−62 °C (−79.6 °F)), and their only source of water is snow that falls on the breeding ground. When the chicks hatch, the males have only a small meal to feed them, and if the female does not return, they must abandon their chick and return to the sea to feed themselves. By the time they return, they have lost half their weight and have not eaten for four months." If either of the parents were to disappear, the Penguin chick would freeze to death whether it were hatched or not. If the male left before the female could transfer her egg to him, she would be forced to abandon the egg or starve to death. If the female did not return after leaving her egg with the male, she would be faced with the same terrible decision. In the Emperor Penguins' case, parenting as a team is imperative to the survival of the chick.

2. The Bottlenose Dolphin

The female Bottlenose Dolphin is a natural-born single mother. Male and female Bottlenose Dolphins that are sexually mature live seperately - the females live in a group while males tend to live alone or with only one to two other males. Between ages 5 and 13, the female Bottlenose Dolphin becomes sexually mature and may reproduce every two to six years after that. A Bottlenose Dolphin is pregnant for twelve months, and nurses and cares for her offspring for eighteen to twenty months after birth. While she may have assistance from another female or even a male dolphin as she gives birth, it appears that the responsibility of caring for the calf is solely hers from that point on. Though female dolphins generally live in groups with other females - referred to as pods - they are all busy caring for their own young and do not share maternal duties. After weaning their calves, female Bottlenose Dolphins maintain a relationship with them for several years. The dolphin mother is not adversely affected by her status as single mother, in part because it is only natural for her to be that way, but perhaps also because she is not truly alone, but surrounded by a supportive group of others in her exact situation. For more about the Bottlenose Dolphin, see the Wikipedia article here.

Both of these and other animals that I read about related to my situation as a single parent in many ways. The general feeling that I got was that my circumstances could be worse, like the rather desperate predicament the Penguin parent would be in if it suddenly found itself to be single. On the other hand, the Dolphin handles the situation with ease because it comes naturally. At any rate, this research is further confirmation that I am not as alone as I sometimes feel, and I will continue to search for a way to convey that in my work.