Extraordinary

Is there anything a mother wouldn’t do for her young?  I came across an article in Time about extraordinary mommies in the animal world and I found it fascinating.

The African Elephant.  They are pregnant for 22 months.  That’s almost 2 years!  Then, their reward?  A 200 pound baby.  200 pounds.  The work doesn’t stop there either.  They will nurse their young for approximately 4 to 6 years and most baby elephants won’t live to see adulthood. 

Orangutans, in the wild, live in the tree tops of Asia.  They live their entire lives in the trees, meaning, an orangutan mom will build about 30,000 tree houses for her family in a lifetime.  They also nurse their babies the longest of any other mammal, until the young of 6 or 7 years old.  On top of all that, they very rarely even put their baby down, choosing to carry it around all that time, even while building all those homes.  

A Koala bear, despite the confusing name, is not even a bear at all but a marsupial.  She will keep her young in her pouch for 6 months where it mooches off mom.  Then, the little joey crawls out of the pouch and right onto mom’s back where it stays for another 6 months.  Talk about a cling on.

I would argue that the polar bear has one of the easiest births in the animal world because she delivers while in her den…hibernating.  She’s asleep!  The cubs will then nurse until it’s time to finally wake up.  At this point, mom has usually been fasting for 8 months.  Can you imagine waking up after not eating for 8 months to find 2 little rugrats that were not there when you went to sleep and all you can think about is eating a seal?!  Not an ideal way to wake up, if you ask me.

Then, perhaps the most tragic of all animal moms, the Giant Pacific Octopus.  Her one goal in life is to have babies.  She will lay about 200,000 eggs in a den and will then stay there, guarding and protecting her eggs at all costs.  She will not leave them and has even been known to eat one of her own arms instead of leaving her eggs to go hunt!  Then her babies hatch and float off into the ocean leaving mom so weak she can’t hunt and cannot possibly defend herself against attackers, which is how her life usually ends.  

Then there’s the human mom.  When thinking about what makes a human mom stand out, I thought about how most moms in the animal world kick their kids out when they’re done nursing and learning.  They don’t hang around in big family groups most of the time.  Now, think of human moms.  How many 20 or 30 something’s do you know still living at home with mom?  Their job doesn’t stop when we’re 18.  They are constantly giving motherly advice, bailing us out, and supporting us in numerous ways throughout our lives. They don’t give up on their kids.  They stand behind them through thick and thin, forever.  The role of being a human mom never ends.  For that, they should get an award.  For all you moms out there, especially my own, thank you for all you do.  Happy Mother’s Day.