Parenting tips from the animal kingdom

FLORA LICHTMAN: Hey, it’s Flora. And you’re listening to Science Friday. I don’t need to tell you that parenting is hard. If you’ve ever been a child, had a child, or seen a child face down in a Target screaming, you know what I mean. But, of course, humans aren’t the only ones raising their young.

So how do animals deal with babies that don’t follow directions or little ones that are constantly begging for snacks? And what can we learn from them? To find out, we called parent and science journalist, Elizabeth Preston, who wrote the book The Creatures’ Guide to Caring: How Animal Parents Teach Us That Humans Were Born to Care. Hey, Elizabeth, welcome to Science Friday.

ELIZABETH PRESTON: Hey, so happy to be here.

FLORA LICHTMAN: We’re happy to have you. Are there animals that make parenting look easy?

ELIZABETH PRESTON: Well, a lot of animals have to do it all the time with no breaks, so they make it look automatic. If not, easy. So I’m thinking of the opposum bomb with the whole row of kids on her back or the gorilla who has to carry the baby clinging to her chest all the time. For them, it looks like something they don’t even have to think about. But the truth is that when the mom does all the work like that, it’s very intensive. And it uses up a lot of her resources. So it’s actually hard, even if it looks natural.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yeah. I mean, I wanted to ask you about this because I think there’s this kind of toxic metaphor in human mom culture that we give everything to our kids. But I wondered, is that not a metaphor in some animal species?

ELIZABETH PRESTON: Totally. There are some mothers that give their body to feed their children, not just in the sense of making milk like we mammals do. But there are spider moms whose hatchlings will eat them alive, for example.

FLORA LICHTMAN: That’s too real.

ELIZABETH PRESTON: I’m serious. I know it’s taking the metaphor too far. There’s also a really strange amphibian called a caecilian. It’s kind of like a salamander with no legs. And she grows this kind of thick, extra fatty skin when she has babies. And then the babies are born with these specialized, sharp teeth. And they peel pieces of her skin, I want to say, like a banana, not to be too disgusting. And they eat her skin. She survives, but it is horrifying.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Oh, my god. That’s what we come from. That’s the legacy that we’re working off of. We asked our listeners what parenting problems they needed help with. And I want to play you one.

BLYTHE: Hi, Flora. My name is Blythe. I am calling from the podcast Science Vs. But also, I am calling from upstate New York, the beautiful Catskills. In response to your parenting question, we cannot solve the bedtime pop-out. It is every night. We’re down, we do the song, we do the book, we do the teeth, we do the routine. And then the kid still pops out, nice and cozy in there, pops out.

Sometimes it’s like, yeah, sure, I have to pee. Sometimes it’s like, I need some water. But the other night, it was like, hey, I’m lonely. And sometimes it’s like, oh, yeah, I forgot to show you the picture I drew at school. And then sometimes it’s like, I forgot. I forgot why I’m out of bed. So if your expert has any advice on reducing the number of pop-outs, I would love to hear it. Thank you.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Bedtime– classic. Do you have any advice for Blythe?

ELIZABETH PRESTON: I think my only advice is maybe some reassurance that humans are not alone with the problem of trying to get our kids to go to sleep by themselves. I’m thinking of gorillas, for example. When gorillas are babies, their mothers are completely responsible for childcare.

But when it’s older, the other gorillas in the group interact with it more, including the silverback male gorilla who’s the older, dominant gorilla in the group. These silverbacks are really tolerant of the younger gorillas. And they will play with them, hang out with them. And they’ll even let the juvenile gorillas share their nest at night. They’ll let the juveniles kind of cuddle up with them. So wanting to be close to an adult is not only a human kid issue.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Co-sleeping. Gorillas do it. Another common theme we had from our callers was screen addiction, which is hard to find an analog for in the animal kingdom. Because most animals don’t have iPads.

ELIZABETH PRESTON: No, no.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Even opposable thumbs.

ELIZABETH PRESTON: No.

FLORA LICHTMAN: But can you think of an analogy?

ELIZABETH PRESTON: So lots of animals like to play. And the good news about humans– and this speaks to something that was actually a major theme in The Creatures’ Guide to Caring, which is backing up a little bit. If you look at our human ancestors, the earliest humans, anthropologists and biologists believe today that we evolved to raise our kids cooperatively.

So our ancestors wouldn’t have had just the mom and the dad alone in the cave or whatever, taking care of the kids, all by themselves, slogging through it. They would have been part of a team of caretakers. And that team might have included older siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, maybe even neighbors and friends.

So one thing I learned is that in a lot of other species that raise their children cooperatively, like human ancestors did, the older siblings are an important caretaker. So often, older siblings, who were still at home and don’t necessarily need a parent’s care, hang out for a little while. And they help care for their younger siblings.

I’m thinking of animals like a meerkat. Or some birds do this. And so with humans, too, there’s this idea that older kids are part of the child care team. And you can see this. If you look at some small-scale traditional societies around the world, you’ll see these groups of kids, of mixed ages running around together. And it’s kind of like their school. They learn from the older kids. They practice doing adult things. And so their entertainment is really a way of learning and practicing to be an adult.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I mean, what about grandparents? How many animals do the grandparent thing?

ELIZABETH PRESTON: That’s a really interesting question. And one of the signature things about our species is menopause, right? So this idea that older females stick around when we’re not fertile anymore. And it seems to be not that we turn off our fertility in the middle of life, but rather, that we live decades beyond, when our fertility naturally stops.

So if you look at, for example, a chimpanzee, she also peters out in her ability to have kids, maybe around age 50. But that’s also around when she would die naturally. We have tacked on these decades of useful life after the end of our fertile period. And scientists think that that’s because, evolutionarily, grandmothers were helping to keep their kids and their grandkids alive and pass on their genes.

And when you look across the animal kingdom, the only other place where you see menopause having evolved is not even in a close human relative at all. It’s in certain whales. So, for example, in killer whales, they have these matriarchal groups where older female whales, who have stopped being fertile, lead their families. They help them find food. And they help their children and their grandchildren whales to stay alive.

FLORA LICHTMAN: They’re there for date night. Speaking of grandparents, we got a call from a grandparent. This is Lisa in Santa Cruz.

LISA: My under one-year-old granddaughter makes a wonderful little sound when she wants attention. She goes, [SQUEAL]. But then, for no apparent reason, she’s sitting quietly on your lap. She will come out with the loudest sound you’ve ever heard. And everyone can hear it for the entire house. And we don’t how to help her not make that sound. Any ideas?

FLORA LICHTMAN: Any ideas? Is this a thing in the animal kingdom?

ELIZABETH PRESTON: So this is a really interesting question. If you look at, again– I’ve given the example before of the baby gorilla. But this is a good parallel, I think, because it’s a great ape. It’s a close relative. It’s very different from a human baby. And one of the ways it’s different is that the baby gorilla does not make loud sounds. But this makes sense when you think about that history I mentioned earlier of cooperative caretaking.

So if the human baby has evolved to be cared for by many different people, it might be getting passed around all day long. It needs a way to let its mom know or let its caretakers know that it’s hungry. And it needs to go back and nurse. Or, maybe say, my cousin put me down in a pile of leaves. And now, I’m cold.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Help.

ELIZABETH PRESTON: Help. Exactly. It needs to be able to get attention. Whereas that baby gorilla who’s clinging to its mother’s fur all day– it doesn’t need to tell anyone anything. It can just move its head and get milk when it needs to. So human infants do have a reason to make noise more than relatives.

Another interesting thing is that when you look across all of the primates, so the apes and the monkeys, you do find some other cooperatively breeding animals. They’re not close relatives of ours. They’re monkeys called marmosets and tamarins. And they live in South America.

In the tree tops are these small monkeys. And the mothers have twins, usually. And it’s a ton of work to take care of these twins. And so they rely on their family groups to cooperate and care for these babies. And they pass them around all day long. But one interesting thing about the marmosets and tamarins is that this is the only other primate where you see babbling.

So you can hypothesize that in our evolutionary past, our babies had to evolve to get an adult’s attention, to be charming and engaging. Because it’s in the babies interest for caretakers around it to want to hold it, and want to cuddle it, and want to share their food, right? And so, perhaps, this need to engage with the caretakers around it caused both our babies and the marmoset and tamarin babies to evolve this cute, babbling behavior. It’s not only practicing speech, but maybe just a way to be adorable.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I’ve heard that bats do baby talk.

ELIZABETH PRESTON: Oh, I don’t about that, but that sounds interesting.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Well, let’s fact check me.

[LAUGHTER]

OK, we have to take a break. But when we come back, how do animal parents cope with hunger?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

OK, another classic parenting woe. Anyone who’s a parent will have heard this before. Can I have a snack? Do animals have to deal with this?

ELIZABETH PRESTON: Definitely. All kids want snacks all the time. At least that’s true in my house. But one species where this actually has been studied a lot is among the poison frogs. So there are a lot of types of poison frogs. They live in Central and South America. They’re these colorful frogs in the rainforest. And they’ve evolved to be really attentive parents.

The reason that they have to be attentive parents is that, unlike the frogs you might be more familiar with in your own neighborhood, those frogs lay their eggs in a pond. And when the eggs hatch, they become tadpoles, which are basically a fish. And they’re already in a pond, so it’s fine.

But the poison frogs live in the rainforest. And so when their eggs hatch, now you have a fish in the forest. And this is bad. So they need to move those tadpoles as soon as they hatch to a pool of water. And usually, it’s the dad frog who does this. He will crouch down among the tadpoles, get them to wriggle up onto his back. And then he hops around, and he transports them to a small pool of water, maybe a little bit of rainwater cupped in a leaf. And then that’s where they live.

But then among some of these poison frog species, the caretaking goes even further. There’s a species where the dad has to put each tadpole into its own little pool of water. The reason is that the tadpoles are cannibals. Speaking of snacking, they will eat each other if you put them with their siblings. So he has to move them all to different pools. And then he will go around every day.

He’ll remember where those pools are. He’ll hop to each one. And he’ll get into the water. And the tadpole does this little vibrating dance, which communicates hunger or at least communicates that it wants a snack. And so the dad, if he observes this and goes, I think it’s hungry, OK, he starts singing.

He calls to his mate. And his mate hears this song, and she hops over. But she doesn’t take their word for it. She gets in. She observes the vibrating dance, and she decides. And she might go, no, you had enough. Enough snacks already today. You can wait till tomorrow.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Someone’s got to hold the boundary.

ELIZABETH PRESTON: Exactly. But if she decides it really is time for a meal, she’ll turn around. And she’ll lay an unfertilized egg into the pool. And the tadpole will eat that.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Amazing. I mean, let’s talk about dads because this is kind of annoying to me. I’m just going to admit, male seahorses get so much love–

ELIZABETH PRESTON: It’s true.

FLORA LICHTMAN: –online, because they gestate the babies, right? Are they truly the outliers of the animal kingdom?

ELIZABETH PRESTON: No, not at all. And you’re right. Male seahorses do get a lot of credit for what’s ultimately not that much effort. Because they do get impregnated by the female. And they do grow the babies inside them in their belly. But then after they birth the babies, their job is totally done. They will go off, very shortly thereafter and start courting their mate again. And they’re ready to just start over.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So it’s not taking a lot out of them, is what–

ELIZABETH PRESTON: No.

FLORA LICHTMAN: –I’m hearing.

ELIZABETH PRESTON: It’s a minimal effort. And they get a lot of credit, which actually does have some parallels to humans, I would say.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Look at that dad–

ELIZABETH PRESTON: The dad in the grocery store.

FLORA LICHTMAN: –babysitting–

ELIZABETH PRESTON: Exactly.

FLORA LICHTMAN: –his own children.

ELIZABETH PRESTON: How cute.

FLORA LICHTMAN: OK, let’s take another call.

ANN: Hi, my name is Anne. I’m calling from the state of New York. And this is my parenting pickle. I have a pre-teen son who is a real FOMO kid– fear of missing out. And when it’s time to leave and go somewhere, we can tell him it’s time to go, time to get ready.

He says OK. And then pretty soon, he’s not ready. And we’re walking out the door. And we say, we’re going to be late. You’re going to miss the thing that we’re doing. And he has a meltdown. Not quite sure if there’s some strategies we can use to help bridge that gap between no sense of urgency to, oh, my gosh, we’re having a meltdown. So thanks so much. Love the show.

FLORA LICHTMAN: OK. Elizabeth, I wanted to ask you about this. Because this is like the center of my algorithm. There are these just videos of mother bears trying to get their baby bears across a road. And they’re not compliant. And it does feel familiar.

ELIZABETH PRESTON: Yes, definitely.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What would you say to this caller?

ELIZABETH PRESTON: Yeah. I don’t that I have advice. Because this is such a universal problem, right? We as adults know what the kid needs. And the kid relies on us. The reason that we have parental care is because our kids need our help. They need our help not to walk into the street, or to get out of the river, and cross to where there’s food. And that’s our job.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And what’s the strategy that animals use? Is it just move them?

ELIZABETH PRESTON: Yes. I mean, there’s always the, pick them up by the nape of the neck. I don’t know if your caller has tried that. In the poison frogs I was talking about earlier, the dad gets the babies to wriggle up onto his back for a ride. And there is definitely urgency there. Because if they don’t do it in a timely manner, they’ll desiccate and die. So maybe the caller could suggest that to their child. You don’t want to dry out. And then sometimes the babies don’t want to get off the dad’s back. And so he will use one of his legs to flick the baby tadpole off into its pool.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Sometimes you just got to take matters into your own–

ELIZABETH PRESTON: Exactly.

FLORA LICHTMAN: –webbed fins. Whatever. What animals should we not emulate for parenting?

ELIZABETH PRESTON: There are a lot of bird species that have a strategy called an insurance egg. One example is the blue-footed booby, which a lot of people are probably familiar with. They have those blue feet, looks kind of like a seagull. And the idea is that in a good season with a lot of resources, the parents might have the ability to raise two chicks.

But if it turns out that there’s not quite as many resources available as they thought, they’re only planning on raising one. And so in some species, this means the parents will have to actively toss the chick out of the nest. And the blue-footed booby– what they do is let the siblings kind duke it out.

And so they do. They wait the fight, unfairly, by having one of the eggs a little bit sooner than its sibling. So one of the birds hatches before the other one, and it is bigger. And so that sibling has an advantage. And if there isn’t enough food to go around, the bigger sibling will just bully the littler one until it dies.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Oh, man. Too dark. OK, so you wrote this book. You’re also a parent?

ELIZABETH PRESTON: Yes, I have two kids. They are nine and six.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Did you change anything about your parenting approach after working on this book?

ELIZABETH PRESTON: I would like to say that I learned from researching the book about our history of cooperative caretaking. And I started to ask for more help, and really rely on my village more, and embrace my evolutionary past as a cooperative caretaker. But it’s actually very hard.

It’s hard to stop, doing everything yourself. Not everything myself. It’s hard to stop relying on myself, rather than reaching out for help when I need it. And that’s something I’m always trying to do. Now that I’ve written this book, I’m always thinking, it’s only natural. It’s only human for me to rely on a group and to ask my siblings, and my parents, and my in-laws to do things to help out our family.

FLORA LICHTMAN: You got to internalize it, though.

ELIZABETH PRESTON: I do. I do have to internalize it. And it’s hard because I live in Western society. And there’s this idea that the mom is supposed to be the supermom. And the parents are supposed to be this nuclear family unit raising the kids. And when we look at our evolutionary past, that’s really not what’s natural for a human.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Elizabeth Preston is a science journalist and author of the new book, The Creatures’ Guide to Caring: How Animal Parents Teach Us That Humans Were Born to Care. Thanks, Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH PRESTON: Thank you so much for having me.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And you can read an excerpt from the book at sciencefriday.com/parents. This episode was produced by Charles Bergquist. And thank you to everyone who called us with your parenting pickles. If you have a pickle of another sort, we’re here. 877-4-SCIFRI is our number. We are wrapping up Science Friday’s fiscal year on June 30. And we could use your support. We’re aiming to raise $100,000 to close out our budget.

And with your help, I know we can do it. If Science Friday is valuable to you, if you rely on our reporting to make sense of the world or even just to give you your daily dose of joy and wonder, please consider going to sciencefriday.com/donate to make a donation. It’s fast, easy, and secure. And any amount you can swing will help to sustain us in this critical moment. I’ve said it before, but I really mean it. Science Friday can only continue with your support. Thank you for listening. I’m Flora Lichtman.

Copyright © 2026 Science Friday Initiative. All rights reserved. Science Friday transcripts are produced on a tight deadline by 3Play Media. Fidelity to the original aired/published audio or video file might vary, and text might be updated or amended in the future. For the authoritative record of Science Friday’s programming, please visit the original aired/published recording. For terms of use and more information, visit our policies pages at http://www.sciencefriday.com/about/policies/