Mother's Day special: Exemplary moms of the animal kingdom

She stood, unflinching, as the seven-ton aggressor proceeded to toss her a few feet in the air. Weighing nearly 1.4 tons, she was no plush toy herself. But you wouldn't know it by the way she landed on her back and rolled into the watering hole.

It was a wonder she was unscathed.

The scene that unfolded before wildlife photographer Rian Van Schalkwyk in Erindi Private Game Reserve, Namibia, was one for the ages. So on that scorching afternoon in November 2013, he wasted no time capturing this battle between a bull elephant and a hippopotamus mother. The tusker, grazing along the embankment alongside a hippo herd, had gone berserk as she and her calf inched too close for comfort.

In that heart-stopping moment, the hippo did what most mothers instinctively do: put themselves on the line for their babies. But her herd cared little for selflessness. Minutes after the calf had fled to safety and she, trundled into the water, her neighbours consigned her to the fringes.

"No matter," mama hippo may have harrumphed. "My baby is safe. You can all go to hell."

*****Elephants are matriarchal, but not the only mammals to be so: read meerkats, hyenas, bonobos, lions and killer whales. If a bull elephant, like the aforementioned one, were to rampage towards their herd, they'd have dealt with him in ways of their choosing.

"Female elephants huddle around the young to form a protective wall against approaching threats, including male elephants," says Vivek Menon, executive director and CEO, Wildlife Trust of India.

Their family structure and bottomless capacity for empathy makes pachyderms exemplars of motherly love. Led by a sagely grandma and 'allmothers' or nannies, elephant herds not only mourn their dead, but become stand-in mamas for orphans, nursing them as they would their own.

As a researcher and conservationist, Menon is privy to kaleidoscopic manifestations of motherhood in the animal kingdom. The critically-endangered pygmy hog, for instance – found only in Assam – is the world's only pig species to build a nest for its young. Some squirrels build multiple nests to confuse predators. And baby pangolins love piggybacking on mummies' tails. When in danger, their mothers become their armour, curling their scaly bodies tightly around them.

Moms are the favourite mode of transport for sloth bear cubs too, who know they have little to fear that way. "Sloth bears are fiercely protective," he adds. "There have been incidents where a mother fights two tigers to protect the young on her back."

Elephant, hippo and bear mothers aren't the only behemoths with an instinct to defend at all costs. Rhinoceros moms will charge – at speeds up to 40mph – at anything coming between them and their babies.

"I was once conducting a census on elephant back in Kaziranga. Unfortunately (and unknowingly), the elephant separated a rhino mother from her calf, in tall grass," Menon recalls. "The rhino charged at it, biting off a lump of its flesh. In the melee, the guard, who was falling off the elephant, panicked and shot the rhino."

"The elephant eventually succumbed to its injuries. Two animals died, and one was orphaned due to the rage of a rhino mother."

In cold blood

Painting the rhino mom in a stark, raving light would be grave injustice. But for the sake of narrative continuity, one will cross the spectrum from 'hot-blooded rhino' to 'cold-blooded croc'.

At nearly 1.7 tons per square inch, saltwater crocodiles have the strongest bite force in the world. But the jaws that snap one into two also cocoon, with great tenderness, hatchlings that weigh a few grams. When they come out into the world, the squeaky little critters are carried from point to point in mama's mouth.

Let not their reputations as apex predators make you doubt their largesse. If you think pacifism is directly proportional to great parenting, here's a clue: tortoises and turtles don't care for their young.

"All crocodilian mothers care for hatchlings from anywhere between six months to two years," says Nikhil Whitaker, curator at the Madras Crocodile Bank. "They defend creches from birds, monitor lizards and other crocodiles and may also provision food, dividing a fish or bird into manageable chunks for babies."

Just like human mothers arranging food in bite-sized chunks on kids' plates.

But mothering is as much about tough love as indulgence. And croc kids, like human counterparts, need slaps on the wrist too.

"After two years of looking after her offspring, our Siamese crocodile female began to stalk them, grab them in her jaws, and shake them," Whitaker recalls. "Whilst there was not a scratch on the animals, it lends credence that this is intended to 'tell' juveniles it's time to fend for themselves."

Like other serpents, female king cobras don't care for their young. But the world's longest venomous snake – also the only one who builds a nest – is a dedicated mother until her eggs hatch. She keeps guard against animals of all sizes, fasting 2-3 months in the process.

Then, in a remarkable execution of self-preservation – and also that of her brood:

"She leaves her nest an hour before the eggs hatch so that her hunger does not make her eat her own hatchlings," says author and ornithologist Bikram Grewal.

The birds...

Luc Jacquet's March of the Penguins is testament to the lengths one life goes to to beget another. Equal parts poignant and equal parts rousing, this groundbreaking documentary makes us spectate the never-ending duel of birth and death in an emperor penguin colony. The birds invest their all in one precious egg. Mothers walk as far as 80km for food, making sure to bring back something for their little ones as the fathers huddle and insulate babies from frigid Antarctic winds. When a mother loses her child to the brutal cold, she lets out a wail so agonising, it's a shot through the heart.

And for every cuckoo that's a questionable paragon of motherhood, there's the beach-breeding least tern, who gives chicks 'sponge baths' by soaking her tummy feathers in the ocean.

"All mothers, and sometimes, the father, are exemplary parents, toiling mercilessly to gather food for the young," Grewal says. And positive reinforcement isn't used only by humans. Parents push chicks out of nests if they are reluctant to leave, he adds – usually by making them come out bit by bit to obtain food.

Dr. Raju Kasambe of the Indian Bird Conservation Network and Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), describes the Indian Grey hornbill as the mother who incarcerates herself for her children. "She seals herself in a tree hollow for over two months as her mate plasters the opening, leaving just a slit for food. He's the provider and she, the homemaker," he says. "She loses some feathers in this time, coming out only when her chicks grow. The female hornbill becomes weak, but still tends to them while she returns to previous form."

But there's no one way to be a mother. The ones labelled 'bad moms' – those who abandon their young or leave them at the care of others – could be imparting the one life lesson we humans can't digest: 'you're on your own'.

Then there are the bohemians: buttonquails, greater painted snipes and jacanas, who hand maternal reins to males. Why should boys have all the fun, indeed.

"The jacana female courts, lays eggs, disappears, and finds another guy. The cycle continues," Kasambe adds. "She's a polyandrous mother, her sole responsibility being to procreate. Males cry to attract her attention (a mark of protest, no doubt), but she doesn't look back."

...and the bees

Bees and ants are the most well-known of all matriarchal insects, so let's not talk about them. Let's talk instead of pests hated by us, but loved by their kids for being doting, dedicated moms.

There's the earwig (no, she doesn't lay eggs in your ear or brain), who not only fights predators, but constantly cleans her clutch of 20-80 to keep it mold-free. The parasitic strepsiptera, who spends all her life in an insect host, gives herself to her young, who consume her in the ultimate dance of sacrificial motherhood.

Matriphagy – the practice of broods feeding on their own moms – is also seen in arachnids like the ground spider and the desert spider. Motherhood is a pit of thanklessness for these (poor) brave ladies.

Entomology is disproving the belief that bugs, as creatures with 'no intellect or emotional intelligence', are devoid of maternal inclination. In fact, in Child Care Among the Insects, Douglas Tallamy, professor and chair of entomology and wildlife ecology at the University of Delaware, notes:

"Such behavior is indeed analogous to that of 'advanced' life-forms, such as birds and mammals. But caring for offspring is common in invertebrates, including mollusks, worms, rotifers and even jellyfish. Among arthropods, it is the rule for centipedes, spiders, scorpions, sea spiders and the likely closest relatives of insects, the crustaceans."

Formidable six-legged moms include the praying mantis, lace bug and harlequin stink bug. The latter is coolth personified: she defends her kids by farting, which is picked up by other stinkies in what eventually is a symphony of farts to ward off predators.

But for Dr. Caroline Chaboo, it's all about leaf beetles. One of the many revelations in her 2014 paper, Origins and Diversification of Subsociality in Leaf Beetles, is that female tortoise beetles aren't just aggressive parents, but also 'adopt' others' offspring and can forego food for up to three weeks while babies develop.

"They're the coolest moms. They keep their brood together, defend them actively, and lead them to new leaves," says the assistant professor at the department of ecology and evolutionary biology, University of Kansas. "If a larva strays, mom goes back and kicks it in the direction to join the other larvae."

As if that wasn't endearing enough, one wonders if mama beetle experiences empty nest syndrome. "She stays until her babies become young adults and fly off. She is the last to leave," she adds.

Ask her what it is about insect mothers she'd like everyone to know, and Chaboo concludes:

"Mothering is crucial to the survival of all species. Plants invest their seeds – their babies – with nutritional packets, protective coverings and toxins to deter herbivores and give them 'wings' to fly and disperse."

"...Many insect moms stay until their offspring become teens or young adults. Their models of development, to understand our own human development in the early embryo, were elucidated in insects like bugs and flies. Studying insect mothering helps us figure out our own human mothering and fathering behaviours."

And so we all dance, to the circadian heartbeat of the mother we call earth.

*******

Motherhood in the high seas

Isha Bopardikar, marine biologist

Many cetaceans (dolphins, porpoises and whales) have matrilineal societies, with different cultures across and even within species. These cultures are mostly passed down from mother to offspring. In dolphins, mother-calf pairs are usually very tightly-knit in a pod, and there are often creche groups with several calves and females in the pod. There are also signature contact calls that mother-calf pairs use. We still don't know so much about the nursing and maternal behaviour of these animals, especially whales. Only recently, researchers from New Zealand released the first video of what they think is a blue whale calf nursing!"