You’ll know that moms and fathers never get weary if you check out our latest collection of amusing parenting tweets. Or, who knows, perhaps you have a little bundle of joy to remind you of it every day.
In any case, we humans aren’t the only ones who must care for our offspring. Not at all. And there’s a new Twitter thread that captures this universal experience nicely.
It all began when Shawna B posted a photo of a fluffy little family on Instagram. “Cats who look entirely unprepared for the realities of fatherhood are one of my favorite very specific image genres,” she tweeted.
It rapidly went viral, with over 350K likes and 50K retweets, and many others began reacting with equally adorable animal parent photographs. Check them out by scrolling down!
#1 Family of Cosy Cat
#2 Dad passed-out after a long day with the kids.
Animals spend a wide range of amounts of time with their parents. It’s not frequent, but a few species will stay with their mother for a long time—or perhaps their entire lives.
For example, the orangutan takes everything carefully, including leaving-home. According to Helen Morrough – Bernard, a primatologist at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, great apes give birth just once every 7 to 8 years, and the youngster will sometimes breastfeed until he or she is six years old—around the time a new infant arrives.
#3 The Pleasures Of Motherhood
#4 Expert in Imitation
Most orangutan mothers allow their older kids to remain with the infant for up to three years after the baby is born, although some chase the juveniles away after six months.
When the new baby arrives, Morrough-Bernard predicts that the older sibling will “go off exploring on their own and may stay out overnight.”
“This reminds me of an adolescent who goes off to university and returns over the summer vacation. They are not truly autonomous, but they are attempting to be such.”
#5 I Love Momma’s Tail
#6 Sheep Baby Sleeping On Its Mother
#7 Kids Time
Another fascinating scenario is the African elephant civilization, which revolves around women. Females often stay with their natal herd their entire lives, and the eldest, largest female is usually the leader.
Male elephants leave their family groups between the ages of 9 and 18, and given that a wild elephant’s lifespan is around 56 years, this might suggest that he spends up to a third of his life at home.
#8 Send Help
#9 Motherhood’s Pleasures
#10 Mom and child. Unadulterated Joy
Female lions, like elephants, “are the solid social structure of the pride, and it’s the males that come and go, taking over prides,” observed Ed Spevak, curator of invertebrates at the St. Louis Zoo and an expert on African species.
In this fission-fusion community, male lions always disperse for other groupings, and around one-third of females will join other prides.
#11 Wake-Up
#12 The Best Cat Bed Ever Is Mama Cat
#13 Fatherhoood
#14 Mommy’s A sleep, Time To Party
While there are many lovely mothers in the animal realm who care for their children and often put their children first, some take a very different approach.
Most lizards, for example, “place their eggs, cover them, forget about it, and go on,” according to Nassima Bouzid, a Ph.D. student at the University of Washington.
#15 When You First Discover That You’re Pregnant
#16 Assuming the Role of His Mother
#17 At my parents’ house, I discovered this. It’s Just Cruisin’ with Mama
#18 Guys let me in, let me in
Because lizards have a cloaca, an entryway for their reproductive, digestive, and urinary systems, they may mistake the eggs for “an unpleasant and strange excrement” and forget about them.
Most lizards’ lack of parental care, according to Bouzid, could simply be a strategy to generate as many youngsters as possible in the hopes that at least some will survive.
#19 Today, a stray cat brought its kitten into my house. The kitten was abrasive, but the mother was surprisingly calm.
#20 Sleeping like dead
#21 Your children are always essential to you, no matter how weary you are as a mother.
#22 911 – Please Send Help
However, one lizard species goes much further: its young never see their parents, and they never see any other adults of their kind.
In the arid forests of southwest Madagascar, at least one population of The Labord’s chameleon can be discovered. “They’ll lay all of their eggs before the winter. The eggs will hatch just before the summer rains “Bouzid elaborated.
The eggs take eight to nine months to develop, and the adults have aged and perished in the interim.
#23 From left to right: Father, Mother, Brother, Brother, and Sister. A Snuggle with the Family
#24 It Doesn’t Fall Far From The Tree
#25 Daddy’s Day-to-Day Routine
Surprisingly, many insects are cared for by their parents. Moths and butterflies, however, are not among them. They lay their eggs on host plants and then let their offspring to fend for themselves.
“Some caterpillars lay their eggs near ant nests, and the ants look after them. It’s like a tiny Moses, “Katy Prudic, a University of Arizona entomologist, commented
#26 The Mamma Cat’s Expression
#27 Hiding Away From The Biting Puppies
#28 “Of all the possible places for him to sleep, it had to be my head.”
#29 They Said You Should Have Children
They have a lot of ingenuity. Let’s have a look at the enormous blue butterfly’s caterpillar as well.
It secretes a delicious material that attracts a specific kind of red ant, and it smells like ant larvae, so the ant brings it back to its nest with its own brood, which the caterpillar eats.
#30 In Botswana’s Okavango Delta, a six-week-old leopard cub jumps on its mother.
#31 Motherhood
#32 A Tired Mother with Her Puppies
#33 “This Is My Life Now That I’ve Had Puppies?”
Some young have a natural defense against predators in the form of harmful compounds produced by their host plant, while others have excellent concealment.
For example, the common lytrosis of eastern North America can readily pass for a twig. If it falls off its backdrop branch, it may attach a “zip line” with its silk and pull itself back up.
They may not have someone to cuddle them like the boys and girls in these photos, but they did receive an evolutionary “inheritance” from their parents that allowed them to survive!