Despite the overwhelming number of toys or games they might own, it’s common for kids to experience a heavy dose of boredom during the unexciting hours of the day. “Mom, I’m bored” is such a common refrain in some homes that the parents will bristle whenever they hear it.
This sea lion mom looks like she’s one syllable away from dolling out a heavy list of chores to her little cub. Yes, if you didn’t know, a child sea lion is called a cub. An infant is called a calf, which is rather unlike a land lion.
Throwing a Tantrum in Public
Even if you don't have kids of your own, you've encountered this problem – a child squalling for no reason whatsoever, or a toddler kicking its feet because Mom won't buy the right kind of sugary cereal.
This tiger cub looks like it's flexing its growing strength to try and force its mom to do something it wants. Still, it's about to learn the same thing that all kids learn as they start to grow – their parents are way, way stronger than they are, and we bet this tiger mom will win a hundred times out of a hundred.
We Desire Worms!
Ask literally anybody why a child might be crying, and we bet that the top answer is going to be “the child is hungry.” It might drop to somewhere in the top three, but this one is so universal that nobody will forget it. This is true of the animal kingdom, too, as we see here with a pair of young swallows.
It looks like they could be singing backup to “What's Going On” by Marvin Gaye, but what they actually want to do is eat, Mom, come on. Cough up some of those good bugs!
Snuggle Time!
Everybody loves a cute baby. It makes perfect sense – natural selection wants us to want the species to continue, so we tend to like infant varieties of our own species. This is true for all primates, not just humans, and we think this picture of a pair of proud macaque parents snuggling their newborn daughter is a perfect example.
Mom and Dad seem all agog over their little bundle of joy. Hard to argue – she's a cutie. Skin-to-skin (or in this case fur-to-fur) contact is a big part of growing a relationship between parents and children, and these monkeys are on their way.
Looking Around
Babies are, by their very nature, wonderfully inquisitive. Once they're out in the real world, they have two jobs: learn, and eat. We all know that they have the latter task figured out (just try to stop them from eating everything in sight), but the first task is a little slower.
They have to take in everything around them to learn how to live. This is also a survival tactic – they need to make sure what's going on around them so that they can learn how best to protect themselves. This little kid is finally taking a look around!