ANIMAL PARENTAL HABITS.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XXXX, Issue 2130, 8 February 1909, Page 7

ANIMAL PARENTAL HABITS.

Notwithstanding the great differences between man and other animals, their behaviour in regal'd to family life agrees in many points. One reason why this fact is not generally known is that the most touching traits of the family affection of animals have been observed in distant lands. Besides, it is not easy to make such observations, because animal fathers and mothers, the latter especially, employ every possible means to screen their young from observation. No greater error could be made than to assume that herbivorous (vegetable eating) animals, because of their gentler disposition, must be better parents than the carnivora (flesh caters). The lion and the tiger are unquestionably better fathers than the stallion and the bull. The same holds among birds. The hawk is surely a born murderer, yet the parental love exhibited by this bird of prey is used by the hunter to capture it. The young birds are taken from the nest and the parents follow in order to feed them, and so these usually wary birds fail victims to their duty towards their young. In parental qualities, as in bodily structure, the monkey tribe, however stands nearest to the human race. Nature seems (o provide that the more helpless a creature is at birth, the more parental oarc shall be accorded it, and monkeys, like men, arc very helpless at birth and of slow growth. The orangoutang is supposed to require from sixteen to twenty years for complete development. The male monkey is so excellent a father that his many repulsive traits may be forgiven him, and his consort is a most affectionate mother. The spectacle of a monkey mother with her babe gives point to the German expression for doting maternal fondness, "Affcnlkbe” (monkey love). The excessive ca.ro lavished by female monkeys on their young was noticed even in antiquity, and Pliny asserts in all seriousness that monkey mothers hug their babes to death for pure love. No such cases have been observed in modern times, but many monkey mother's have died of grief after the death of their little ones.