Facts About Animals You Didn't Know

At the age of three months, a young oilbird weighs twice as much as its parents and most of its weight is fats Oilbirds, gull-sized but more like nightjars in appearance live in caves in Central America and forage for fruit at night.

A chick’s thick layer of blubber keeps it warm in a cool cave and frees its parents from the task of brooding, so they can devote themselves to finding food. Even with both parents feeding two or four chicks, each youngster is often more than four months old before it can fly. As the feathers grow, it gradually loses its weight.

Fruits, berries of palms, laurels and camphor trees is the oilbird’s chicks diet of which is high I fat and low in protein. It is this shortage of proteins that slows down the chick’s growth. Numerous species of seed-eating birds make up for the lack of protein in their diet by feeding their young on protein-rich insects.

The beautiful blue-capped cordon-bleu bird which can be seen on safari in East Africa, for example, eats only grass seeds but feeds its young solely on termites and other insects. Youngsters that long to grow are vulnerable for much longer and need more looking after. The benefits are that the offspring and the parents are together for longer, so parents may be able to pass on more of the experience. African elephant calves for instance, are suckled for two more years or more. They are capable of picking up behaviors from their mother all subtleties of elephant social behavior, as well as the chance to learn the best places to eat and drink.

In many cases it is not so much the quality of the food supply that slows down an infant’s growth rate as it needs to observe how to survive in places where competition for food and resources is intense.

Keeping Young warm and comfortable

All rodents, such as rats, gerbils, mice and dormice, show strong maternal instincts. Most species’ young ones are born blind and hairless, and therefore without special protection, they could die of exposure.

A rodent mother keeps her babies warm by building an insulating nest round them, often using hair from her chest and curls up beside them. She may lie on top of them to provide extra warmth.

For the first 10-14 days of life of the young rodents are unable to regulate their own temperatures. If the youngster gets cold, it signals to its mother with a high pitched whistle, above the range of human hearing and it comes to its rescue by pressing it close to her body. When a young one falls out of the nest and signals in the same way, the mother retrieves and carry it to safety.

Rodent mothers regularly lick their young to clean them and also induce them to urinate and defecate, which at they do not do spontaneously. A mother ingests the urine to keep the nest clean.