Most of us are pretty sentimental about mothers and babies. If they're animals, they're cute; if they're humans, they are charming, admirable, even noble in their deep connections with each other. And somehow, it's pretty easy for us to make the assumption that all mothers and babies, of every species, have a lot in common with each other. Because we often think of "mothering" as something common to all mammals (at least), we sometimes make the mistake of believing that what is true about one species has got to be true about all the others. Particularly, we jump to the conclusion that research about other species' mothering behavior also tells us something about human beings.
Obviously, mammal mothers as a group have certain things in common. They supply milk for their offspring, and must be able to carry out the right actions to let the young get at the milk. For at least a short period of time, they need to act to keep the babies warm and away from predators-- - which for some species will include their fathers. They either carry the young or encourage them to move in particular directions. But other than those things, mothers of different species may have to do quite different things, depending on what species members can do and how they ordinarily live. Some of those things are either impossible for human beings, or pretty repulsive. For example, mammalian mothers generally lick their offspring around the anus and genital area to cause digestive activity and defecation--- making even the sloppiest diaper change appear quite attractive.
Mothers who are big cats, or wild dogs, foxes, or wolves, have the job of helping their young make the transition from nursing to eating (and eventually killing) appropriate prey animals. To accomplish this, the mothers go out to hunt, leaving the young in their den. They return with prey they've caught, kill it, and eat it in front of the kittens or pups, who are much interested and excited by this event. Then, the mother regurgitates some of the meat she has consumed, and the young devour it. This series of actions has a number of benefits for the babies. They learn about kinds of animals that can be eaten as well as killed. The meat they get to eat is pre-chewed by the mother, which is helpful for babies who only have their milk teeth and would not be very good at tearing up raw meat. The digestive process has started as the meat is affected by the mother's saliva and stomach acid, so it's easier for the babies to digest.
Is there any parallel to human mothering in this mothering behavior? Of course humans don't eat and regurgitate food. However, many human groups have used premastication as a way to give young children non-milk foods. They chew the food and then pass it from their mouths to the babies' mouths. This feeding method will surely never be approved by the American Academy of Pediatrics, but it has real advantages for cultural groups who do not have fuel to cook food thoroughly and make it easily digested, or the utensils to chop or puree food to a texture a baby can handle. I have no idea to what extent premastication occurs in the Western world today, but I recall my mother speaking disparagingly of the practice when I was a child, so it certainly did occur in this country at that time. This is a human behavior that resembles another species' mothering, but is far from identical.
Now, if you're not feeling slightly ill, let's go on to an animal mothering behavior that may make you feel that way. This is one of the jobs of a rat mother. Rats spend a lot of time making their nest, retrieving the young when they get out, bringing them back, keeping them warm, and so on. But in the mean time their bodies are dealing with the problem of helping the babies make the transition from the mother's milk to non-milk foods. The mother, of course, is eating her normal foods, and the babies need to learn about those foods. There are a couple of ways in which the rat mothers accomplish this . One is that their bodies exude a substance called "caecotrophe" through the anus. This substance has been described as "a gelatinous, olfactorily rich substance ... dense in the bacteria necessary for digesting the mother's current diet" (Blass, E. [1999]. The ontogeny of human face recognition: Orogustatory, visual, and social influences. In P. Rochat (Ed.), Early social cognition: Understanding others in the first months of life (pp. 35-65). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum). The pups are attracted to the smell of the caecotrophe and ingest it, taking in the useful bacteria and also tastes related to the mother's normal diet. In addition (could there be more?), the mother lets weanling pups follow her when she feeds, and they investigate her mouth and come in contact with particles of food and with saliva.
Any human parallels here? With respect to the caecotrophe, one can only say that we hope not! But human babies do like to investigate all parts of their mother's faces, like the rat pups that investigate their mothers' mouths. They stick their fingers up her nose and insert a hand into her mouth, often holding on while she pretends to chew on their fingers. The babies then commonly bring back their hands to their own mouths, which may let them taste aspects of the mother's mouth, like what she's been eating.
These examples show some similar-- but NOT identical--- behaviors in human mothering and that of other species. They also show some characteristics which are not only dissimilar from species to species, but impossible for humans to perform. Studying animal mothering is fascinating in itself, and it may give us interesting ideas about human beings, but in the long run, only studies of humans will either describe or explain human mothering behavior.
