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.
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!
Time to Give the Kid Some Chores
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.
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!
Time to Start Weaning
Poor mom. Breastfeeding mothers out there are probably cringing along with the vervet monkey that is suffering through this meal. Breastfeeding is one of the more reliable ways to make sure your kids stay fed, but it without a doubt comes with some...downsides.
For instance, once your kids start growing little chompers, you're going to start looking into different options pretty quickly. It seems like this kid should be moving to a nice, yummy banana instead of torturing his poor mother in such a way. Or maybe this is just how vervet monkeys get it done. It still doesn't seem very nice.