Nature

Some of the Best (and Worst) Animal Dads

June 17, 2016 | Erica Tennenhouse

Photo credit: Laurent Lebois/wikipedia (CC BY 2.0)

From fathers-of-the-year to deadbeat cannibals.

With Father’s Day around the corner, it’s a good time to celebrate some of the most devoted dads of the animal kingdom.

Red Foxes

For the first month after a fox couple has babies, the female must stay in her den to feed the kits and keep them warm. The dad’s job is to provide her with food every four to six hours until she can leave the den to hunt. Fox dads spend a lot of time playing with their youngsters. At around three months, it’s time to start teaching the young pups valuable lessons. Fathers will bury surplus food close to the den and cover it with leaves and twigs, in an attempt to teach the young to forage.

^{Credit: Stefano Bettini/flickr (CC BY 2.0)}

Seahorses

Male seahorses possess the remarkable ability to give birth. The males have a pouch where females deposit their eggs. The male then fertilizes the eggs and incubates them for a period of up to 45 days. When the fry are ready to emerge, the male expels them with muscular contractions.

^{Credit: felicito rustique, jr./flickr (CC BY 2.0)}

Emperor Penguins

Immediately after laying an egg, the mother transfers it over to the father, who spends the dark winter incubating the egg in his brood pouch. By the time the egg hatches, the father has fasted for nearly four months. If the chick hatches before the mother returns, the father feeds it a nutritional substance produced by a gland in his oesophagus. The young chick takes shelter in its father’s brood pouch and spends time balancing on its father’s feet to avoid the icy ground.

^{Credit: CommonismNow/wikipedia (CC BY 2.5)}

New World Monkeys

Marmoset and tamarin infants are usually carried around on their fathers’ backs. But owl monkey dads would probably beat them out in a best dad competition. Father owl monkeys carry their young almost all the time, even when being chased by predators, generally only passing the young over to their mothers for nursing.

^{Credit: Mike Maehr/flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)}

Yellow-Headed Jawfish

Many fathers might find that their hands are full when caring for their children, but yellow-headed jawfish dads have their mouths full with their offspring. In these mouthbrooders, males protect the eggs until they hatch. During this period the male cannot feed and will have lost substantial weight by the time the eggs hatch.

Male yellowhead Jawfish (Opistognathus aurifrons)

^{Credit: Kevin Bryant/flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)}

Common Midwife Toads

When the females of this species release eggs, they are embedded in strings of jelly. After fertilizing the eggs, the male common midwife toad begins to tease out the egg mass so that he can wrap the strings around his legs. He carries the eggs this way for 3 to 8 weeks, until they hatch, all the while keeping them moist by seeking out damp areas or wading through the water.

^{Credit: Laurent Lebois/wikipedia (CC BY 2.0)}

Grizzly Bears

Though several animals practice infanticide, rarely will one kill their own offspring. A grizzly bear male, on the other hand, does not discriminate. He will go after any cubs in his home range, an area as big as 1,200 square miles; thus, he is likely to kill his own offspring. Because bears are opportunistic hunters, they will take advantage of any food source they come across, whether it be berries, fish, or their own cubs.

^{Credit: Materialscientist/wikipedia (CC BY 2.0)}

Sand Gobies

Sand goby dads are solely responsible for the care of their eggs and they generally do a good job of it, with one exception — they tend to eat about a third of them. Even when they have excess food available, they will still devour their eggs, so they’re not just doing it because they’re hungry. Researchers speculate that by preferentially eating the slowest-hatching eggs, the males are able to cut down on the time spent caring for their young.

^{Josve05a/wikipedia (CC BY-SA 2.0)}

Bass

When bass babies hatch, their father guards them, providing protection against predators and circling around to keep them all together. However, after a few days, once most of the fish have swum away, the father’s behavior shifts. Rather than defending the stragglers, he now treats them as he would any small prey and eats them.