Taking Care of Young Ones (Essay Sample)

Taking care of the young ones
In the animal kingdom, the role of taking care of the offspring is in most cases believed to be the responsibility of the female. This is more pronounced in the Mammalia kingdom where the offspring have to suckle from their female parents. Because the young ones have to be with their female parents, it is perceived that the males have no role in rearing of the offspring (Brock, 1991)). Nevertheless, there are other taxa where the young ones do not suckle and thus even the male can provide the little yet important care that the young ones need from the parents. The birds are a good example of animals where the male can also take care of the young ones since there is no suckling. Hence, taking care of young is a shared responsibility. In other cases, it is the male who offer the care, paternal care while in others it’s the role of the females (Baker, 1994)). There are factors that dictates who among the parents will provide care for the offspring. The aim of this essay to analyze why in most taxa the female do the caring for their offspring.
In mammals, the females have a bigger role in the reproduction. Lactation dictates that the females will invest heavily in the reproduction responsibility. Most mammals have a lactation period that ranges between months to a number of years after birth. Lactation requires that the offspring will spend this time with their female parents. Hence taking care of the young ones is primarily the responsibility of the females. The males also plays a role to a lesser degree that is in most cases limited to looking for food and shelter for the female parent and the young one (Gubernick1998). The male may also provide security to the family but has little direct role to taking care of the offspring. In mammals male have no connection to the offspring and the female may mate with more than a single male. It is thus hard to single out a male partner to help in bringing up the offspring. Males might also assume responsibility of taking care of the female and the young ones regardless of whether it is the direct male that helped in conception. In mammals, the females are predominantly the care givers with 90% female-only care and a biparental care of about 10%. Male-only care cases are non-existent among mammals (Hartman, 2003).
The other reason that the females have to do the caring of the young ones is the natural adaptations. The female of most taxa have special features over the male that facilitate them to offer good care of the young ones. In birds, the female birds have thick fur and feathers and a lower underside. The adaptation helps the female to provide the warmth to the young ones because the young ones are susceptible to succumb to cold. The lower underside helps in covering the young ones so that they can all fit in its lower side. On the other hand, the male birds have little feathers and are tall. They are not adapted to offering the warmth that the females can offer. Kangaroo is the other example (Mart, 2005). The females have adaptive features that enables them to carry their young ones with them to provide care.
The other reason why the female have to take care of the young ones is the social organization within taxa. In insect kingdoms, there is female whose work is to do the hatching of the young ones. In these cases the roles are divided among the members of the group. The male are entitled to look for the food and provide security for the female and the young ones. The male also construct shelters and living space for the young ones and the females. A case example is the ants and termites. The members of these groups are divided amongst the roles. There is a designated female whose work is to lay the eggs. The males provide security and gather food for the rest of the group members (Berman, 1981). This reason is also explicit among the humans. The females are expected by the society to take care of the young ones. The male are entitles to look for food and provide security.
The number of offspring in a fertile lifetime of the mother determines whether the care will be provided by both the male and the female. In many mammals the number of offspring is very small like in human the female can get only one offspring in a minimum of nine months’ time. It illustrates that the parental care is minimal and can be undertaken by one parent. Since the female must perform lactation it explains why in most cases the care is provided by the female. Other female must have a single offspring in the lifetime. This reduces the care needed to ensure that the offspring mature safely. The little care is left to the females because the care is little for the males to offer help. Biology of the parents also determines who among the two parents will take care of the young ones. The attachment to offspring is in most cases hormonal. The level of attachment correlates to hormones present in parents. These hormones accumulates in most cases to the female parents. The hormones makes the parent own the offspring and are emotionally attached. It explains why most females like in the case of hens, dogs and human protect their young ones from danger as compared to the males (Berman, 1981).
The other factor that dictates that it is only the female who take care of the young ones is the duration of care that the offspring need. In the animal kingdom there those offspring that are abandoned the time the eggs are laid by the female and left to hatch on their own. In this case the role of female and male in offspring rearing is reduced to mating and laying of eggs only. On other instances, the young ones takes days to be left on their own since birth. In this cases, the mother has little time to take care of the offspring while the male have no time to offer parentage care. The time it takes for the offspring to be on their own is minimal for the mail to assume responsibility (Yuan, 2005). In such a case, it is only the females who provide care to the offspring. In humans the offspring spend years under care of the parents like 18 years because of the societal development. Fathers are thus called upon to offer care during this extended duration.
The other reason why the females take care of the offspring is the ecology. Some ecological factors favor the female at the expense of male. Some female animal are better suited to live in harsh conditions as opposed to male. These allows them to move to harsh conditions to lay their eggs or give birth to young ones. For example some female are known to lay eggs is dense mud where the predators cannot get to. The male have no adaptive features to allow them to get to these places and thus do not tend to the offspring. Some female may also have or develop different features that are dictated by the ecology. Some female animals or insects have to go through the lifecycle in order to survive harsh conditions. For example the females change from larva, adult, nymph and then adults in different conditions to ensure the offspring are safe. In other instances the females fly or moves longer distances to safe conditions where young ones will survive and leave the males back (Stahlschmidt and Denardo, 2009).
Not all situations where the female take care of the offspring. There are some situations where the parental care is male-only, while others there is share of responsibility between male and female. Paternal care is however not common in most cases. The same conditions and factors that ensures that parental care is female-only also plays part in ensuring that the care is male-only or biparental care. A special case is for the bird. The birds exercise a 90% biparental care, 8% female-only care, and 2%male-only care to the offspring. Fishes on the other hand do not provide parental care to the young ones in most cases. The selected cases where fishes take care of the young ones, it is 50% male only, 30% female-only and 20% biparental care (Mart, 2005). There are certain factors that allows a certain taxon to have a male-only or biparental parental care.
The factor that makes some animals like fish to have a considerable percentage of paternal care can be explained from Williams’s principle. The principle suggest that the consideration of both the cost and benefit of investing in parental care present brood relative to investment into future broods. In this sense, the female reproductive increases positively with increasing body size while for the male diminishes. Thus it requires that if the reproduction was to be left to the females alone, the offspring will be many. On the other hand, if the reproduction was to be left to the males with diminishing rate, the future generation would diminish as well. Thus, the males are called upon to take care of the young ones to ensure they reach maturity. This principle can be used to explain why the role of parental care has reversed in particular cases.The offspring that are taken care of mature to get to maturity while the others with no parental care rarely survive to maturity (Kahn, Schwanz and Kokko, 2013). The most parental care among the fishes involve fanning of the eggs and guarding the young one against the predators, both the female and the male can do this (Hickman & Stephens, 2003).. The nature of the parental care thus explains why the parental care can be provided by both in extreme conditions.
In the case for the birds, the parental care is dictated by the nature of the resources that are required to generate an offspring capable of flying. The amount of resources dictates whether the female can offer all that or whether the male can come in and assist. 90% of bird species have the male ones providing the parental care, the care that might extend to even incubating the eggs. The female lays the egg in nests that are constructed by the males and leaves the egg in the nest. The male incubate the eggs and when they ...