New mothers and fathers tend to obsess over the smallest nuances of child-rearing, for the simple reason that they want to be good parents. So does every other animal, as it turns out, and over millions of years they’ve developed a surprising range of strategies for keeping their offspring safe and healthy.

At some level they — and we — all have the same goal. Karen Bales, a professor at University of California Davis who studies social bonding, explains the two (hopefully obvious) fundamentals of good parenting: “Number 1 is that the baby survives,” she says. “Number 2, that the parent is responsive to the baby’s needs.”

But behind those core tenets you’ll find crocodiles swimming around with hatchlings inside their lethal jaws, cuckoos surreptitiously pawning their eggs off on other birds, and meerkats who teach their young to hunt by bringing them disabled scorpions. In other words, you’ll find as many ways of parenting as there are animals in the world.

Good Parenting Can be No Parenting

To put things into perspective, parenting behavior that we would consider good from a human standpoint is relatively rare in nature. In fact, Kumi O. Kuroda, who studies social behavior at Japan’s RIKEN Center for Brain Science, writes in a recent review that “in the majority of animals, parents do not care for the offspring.”

Only 30 percent of fish, 25 percent of amphibians, and 10 percent of reptiles do anything to set their children up for success. These are major taxonomic groups and they’ve been getting along fine for hundreds of millions of years — so maybe they are doing something right? Nevertheless, if it’s role models you want, you could do better.

Read More: Just Like Us: Animals Also Mooch Off Their Parents

Maternal Care: A Mother’s Love

Perhaps the best place to look for parenting best practices in nature is the closest to home: other mammals. Their babies can’t survive without nursing, which means 100 percent of parents (or at least mothers) must act like parents. And oh, do they — in many species, adults will feed and protect their young for years, all while preparing them to tackle life on their own.

With elephants, this process can take almost as long as it does for humans. Males stay with their natal herd until they reach maturity, between 10 and 14 years old, while females stay for their entire lives, up to 80 years. Herds are matriarchal, and all the females chip in to raise the calves communally.

The only species that rivals this bond is the orangutan. Mothers often carry their children until age 5, nurse them until age 8, and continue to teach them well beyond that. Even after they’ve become independent, females in particular keep coming back to visit Mom into their mid-teens. One rationale for this prolonged relationship is that there’s just so much to learn — what to eat, where to find it, and of course how to build one of those cozy treehouse nests.

Paternal Care: Sticking Around

Unfortunately, the mammalian need for milk means that Mom is indispensable, whereas Dad can often get off the hook without threatening the survival of his offspring. As a result, only 10 percent of males stick around to see the project through.

That’s not to say all mammal fathers are like this. Some, like the titi monkey, are paragons of parenting.

Bales says these tiny South American primates are “the only species I’ve ever worked with where I would actually say the mothers don’t like their infants.”

Mother and child only interact during nursing; afterward, the little one crawls right back to father.

Speaking of wonder-dads, they can even be found farther afield in the animal kingdom. Take the African bullfrog, females of which lay their eggs in small, seasonal pools that eventually disappear. If a male sees the pool evaporating too quickly, he strenuously digs a channel to another one, diverting water to make sure his babies don’t dry up.

Read More: Were Dinosaurs Good Parents to Their Offspring?

Monogamy: Joining Forces

Monogamy isn’t common in animals, but it has big perks. With two parents instead of one, Bales explains, “you increase the fitness of the baby because you’re giving it extra care.”

More food and a second bodyguard makes survival that much more likely.

This is where our feathered friends shine: Whereas 90 percent of mammal species separate after reproduction, 90 percent of bird species stay together. That cooperation creates new possibilities.

Emperor penguin parents famously take turns incubating their egg while the other goes out to feed; hornbill mothers seal themselves up securely in a tree with their hatchlings, leaving a hole just large enough for the father to slip grub through; and bald eagle mates work together to construct the largest nests in the world, up to 4 feet tall and 6 feet in diameter.

Alloparenting: It Takes a Village

For some animals, child-rearing is even more of an all-hands-on-deck affair. Prairie voles — like humans — engage in alloparenting, where siblings, other relatives and even non-relatives help take care of the young. According to Bales, many prairie voles choose not to venture out of their burrows and reproduce, likely because they make a terribly easy snack (they’ve been called “the popcorn of the prairie”).

“It’s dangerous to leave,” she says, “and therefore you’re better off staying home and helping.”

After all, siblings share 50 percent of their genome, meaning they have as much genetic stake in their brothers and sisters as in their own offspring.

All this awe-inspiring animal parenting demands an explanation: Why go to the trouble? To some moms and dads, the answer is surely self-evident. To Bales — who observes adorable younglings for a living and still doesn’t want any of her own — it remains something of a mystery.

“I get how cute they are and everything,” she says. “But boy, they need to be cute. They are a lot of work.”

Article Sources

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Cody Cottier is a contributing writer at Discover who loves exploring big questions about the universe and our home planet, the nature of consciousness, the ethical implications of science and more. He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and media production from Washington State University.