baby mommas and baby daddys

This past summer, I lived by myself in a little house out in the middle of a cornfield in rural central Louisiana. A bunch of barn swallows decided it would be the perfect place to be the local hangout/nesting site. At first, I would sit on the porch and watch them, appreciating their pretty blue feathers, rusty bellies and elegant silhouettes against the sky. As the weeks went on, they would not shut the eff up and I took to throwing lit firecrackers at them. What? Don’t judge me.

One morning, as I was leaving for work, I seemed to piss them off more than usual. They began to dive-bomb me. Aggressively. I felt one’s tiny little feet graze my hair. They were not letting up. I looked back at the porch and saw what had set them off. A baby swallow had hopped out of the nest and onto the porch that morning and I had walked within a foot of it. My feelings of avecide faded and I understood. They were just doing what they were programmed to do- they look out for their babies just like we do.

Parental care is well-researched behavior, and, simply put, is the investment that a parent makes in its offspring. It is a behavior that varies greatly both between and within taxa. Some frogs lay their eggs and haul ass, never to see the shining faces of their froglets. Then you have frogs that carry their babies in pores on their very own backs to keep them safe. Even invertebrates (those soulless, unrelatable creatures like bugs) sometimes lay their eggs in another animal, so that when they hatch they’ll have something to eat. Even though mom doesn’t stick around, that is still a form of parental care.

If you go to Google Scholar and type in “parental care,” most of the papers that pop up will be studies about birds. Parental care is especially interesting in birds. Can you think of any reasons why? Contrast it with mammals. Mammal moms carry the fetus internally until birth and most times, dad hit it and quit it and he’s nowhere to be found. At the end of the day, it’s up to mom whether or not the offspring will be taken care of after birth. How is this process different in birds?

They lay eggs instead of getting knocked up. Fetal development happens outside of the female. Eggs and egg laying certainly take energy from the female, but it is drastically less of an investment than pregnancy. When human females experience a miscarriage, the loss is profound both emotionally, but also physically. This is just how it is for mammals. We (females) physically invest an enormous amount of energy and resources into our offspring. But how many times have you seen a bird abandon her nest for apparently no reason? It happens all the time. It’s nothing for a bird to find another willing mate and drop some more eggs.

So imagine you’re a male bird. A few days after sex, Tina (your current partner) lays some eggs and guess what. They’re 50% your problem. She can easily go find another guy bird who will mate with her and actually help rear the offspring. So you better get in gear and start helping out, or Tina will abandon your ass and your name will die with you.

With this system of external fetal development, there is more of an opportunity for males to contribute to their offspring’s chances of survival. The parental investment is more evenly balanced. Not a bad set-up, if you ask me.

Friday bonus:

In light of the recent exotic animal escape in Ohio, a friend of mine has posted his take on the situation. Great read. Check it out.

http://4-2morrow.blogspot.com/2011/10/learning-from-tragedy-call-to-crack.html