Wild Moms

by Carin Bondar

Overview

A fascinating and entertaining tour of motherhood in the animal kingdom that reveals a new perspective on the mother/child relationship.

Being a mom is a tough job—but imagine doing it in the jungle or out on the safari, faced by the ravages of the elements, a scarcity of resources and the threat of predators prowling at all times of the day and night. In Wild Moms, Dr. Carin Bondar takes readers on an enthralling tour of the animal kingdom as she explores the phenomenon of motherhood in the wild.

A journey through motherhood for the animal kingdom—from the initial phases of gestation and pregnancy through breastfeeding and toddler-rearing and trying to parent a teenager through empty nest syndrome (which, in many of these cases, is quite literal!) to being a grandmother. In Wild Moms, Dr. Bondar answers a whole host of questions about the animal kingdom: How do moms in the animal kingdom cope with crying babies and potty training? How does breastfeeding work in the wild—particularly when a mother is nursing not one baby at a time, but a whole litter? If children with disabilities do not fit into Darwin’s theory of evolution, then why do we see mothers from various mammalian groups providing ongoing care to disabled offspring?

Accessible and entertaining, Wild Moms is a celebration of moms everywhere—and a book guaranteed to make readers think about motherhood in an entirely new way.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681776651
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	04/03/2018
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Dr. Carin Bondar received a PhD in population ecology from the University of British Columbia and has hosted a variety of online and television programs at Scientific American, PBS Digital Studios, and the Science Channel. She is also the author of Wild Sex and lives in British Columbia, Canada.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

1 Development Is Diverse 1

2 The Egg-Content Conundrum 16

3 Brood Parasitism: An Inconvenient Truth 31

4 Cooperative Creeds and Communal Cliques 44

5 Runks in Mammalian Ovens 74

6 A Pregnant Pause 86

7 A Child Is Born 94

8 Newborns and Nightmares 104

9 Depression and Abuse: Not Just a Human Predicament 124

10 Mammal Moms and Milk 137

11 Opportunistic Orphans and Magnanimous Moms 157

12 Other Mothers: Adoption and Allomothering 167

13 The Meaning of Weaning 180

14 Menopausing Moms and Gracious Grandmas 193

15 Mothers in Mourning 211

Afterword 227

References 231

Acknowledgments 257

About the Author 259

Index 261

Editorial Reviews

Entertaining. Racy in tone, and full of the sort of lurid detail with which you can reduce a dinner party to silence, this is a lively read with a heavyweight scientific bibliography.

Daily Mail (on "Wild Sex")

As Bondar proves in Wild Sex, the world of animal mating can be much more complicated than trying to figure out if what you swiped right on is a catfish. Wild Sex looks at the animal laws of attraction, physical act of sex and reproduction patterns of several animal species, including the obstacles some animals must overcome to perpetuate their species: The male redback spider, for example, is consumed by its cannibalistic female partner after copulation. And you thought OkCupid was rough.”

Chicago Tribune (on "Wild Sex")

Bondar’s witty writing style packs a lot of fascinating information into easily digestible essays that are extremely thought-provoking.

starred review (on "Wild Sex") Booklist

2018-02-06
A Canadian biologist and mother of four offers a zoological survey of motherhood in the wild.Using a wealth of research on instinctual behaviors, Bondar (Wild Sex: The Science Behind Mating in the Animal Kingdom, 2016) hopes new lessons can be learned about the human species through the examination of wild animals and their processes of parenthood. As numerous as they are diverse, there are no wrong approaches to the multifaceted business of motherhood. These diverse processes encompass the "broadcast spawning" of aquatic animals and the oviparity of amphibians, but the author also discusses the complicated factors associated with the egg-laying systems of certain bird species and the intrusive deceit of nest parasitism, in which a menacing foreign species deposits eggs into another nest to be hatched. Bondar also introduces readers to female mammals within the animal kingdom who must jockey for the prized social positioning necessary for even a chance at reproduction, meerkats that adopt a complex hierarchy of dominance to achieve this particular goal, and female hyenas whose retractable "pseudopenises" make gender recognition virtually impossible. From conception to birth, the author vibrantly analyzes a wide array of breeding practices and rearing methods from the cooperative to the communal; each is intriguing, unique, and "evolutionarily stable and successful." Some of these reproductive enigmas and oddities are positively captivating. For example, many mammalian and primate females can enact a suspended animation state of gestational "diapause" until environmental conditions become optimal for birthing; toothed whales are the only other group of animals that experience menopause "to the extent that humans do." Throughout, the author stresses how many issues that arise within the animal kingdom occur just as naturally in human child-rearing as well. The heartbreaking closing chapter on grieving animal mothers is especially poignant, providing an illuminating coda to this literary embrace of parenthood in the wild kingdom.A study brimming with endlessly fascinating fodder for animal lovers.

Kirkus Reviews

“A literary embrace of parenthood in the wild kingdom. A study brimming with endlessly fascinating fodder for animal lovers.”—Kirkus Reviews

“There’s much to amaze readers. Popular science readers with an interest in

evolutionary biology will enjoy this book.”—Library Journal

From the Publisher