The 10 Most Extreme Mother Animals
Some babies in the animal kingdom have some extreme moms and that is because of various reasons such as the extreme conditions they live and give birth. So let’s see how our countdown list goes on and meet these extreme mothers.
10 – Elephant
She is an extremely big momma, there is no other animal in the land who gives birth to a big baby. An elephant is pregnant for a record 22 months period, even with that the sole idea to give birth to a 200 pound baby wouldn’t seem so bad. Compared to the human size of a baby wich represents 5% of the moms weight, the baby elephant is half the size of the human baby compared to the size of its mom relatively speaking.
Elephants are extreme moms cause they do not only give birth to big babies, but they also are grand mothers in these matriarchal societies. All the males are forced out to stay single or to join bachelor groups. With so many moms in the herd is no wonder these babies are rised with tons of affection.
9 – Koala
From Australia, when it comes down to devotion this mom reaches new heights. She is able to spend 90% of the day asleep to look after her baby. Its her extreme digestion that safeguards her baby the turns her into a extreme mom. It is the only animal that eats the poisonous leaves of the eucalyptus tree. It manages to survive on this deadly diet thanks to a special digestive bacteria that detoxifies the leaves. Koala babies are not born with this pack of bacteria so her mom pass them on from their mother’s droppings.
8 – Alligator
This mom is definitely deadly, especially when around the compost she likes to call the “nest”. It’s easy to believe she has no maternal intincts at all, especially when her babies end up between those massive teeth. So why this mom has to eat her own babies?
At first glance, the compost she arranges could seem to be a poorly designed nest, but it isn’t so, it build in such way to provide enough heat for the eggs inside. Thus, this extreme mom doesn’t have to touch the eggs for then next two months. The only problem is that she makes sure nobody gets closer enough to the nest.
Alligator moms also use sound to find out if their babies are ready for the outside world. When she listens sound coming from the nest, it means for her it’s due time to start digging. But she doesn’t eat her own babies, she just carry them in a safe armor to a better enviroment for them. This extreme mom is actually the world’s biggest bodyguard.
7 – Polar Bear
Living in one of the most extreme conditions, she is one extreme mom in more than one way. Polars bears by nature are loners, then finding a mate can be tricky sometimes. A male can track a female footprints for more than 60 miles, but he is just in the quest for one thing, once done she is left alone again and the hard work begins since she has to find enough food to double her weight in order to avoid reabsorbing the fetus inside.
After gained all that weight you won’t see a clue of her whereabouts for at least two months when she dissapears inside her snowcave to hybernate. A polar bear baby is blind, toothless and very very cute. Her sleepy mom feeds the baby with a very rich milk plenty of fat for the next 10 weeks.
6 – Cheetah
The cheetah is one the most hardworking moms in the African lands cause she lots of mouths to feed, meaning she has to spend all day producing milk to feed their babies. But that is just the easy part. After 6 weeks the babies are more than ready to hunt, not to mention it doen’t get any easier for mom when they are teenagers.
The cheetah is an extreme mom because she has to spend two years looking after the kids playing around or trying to join for the hunting, they learn that by watching closely to her mom in action as she readies to attack her victim.
As soon the kids learned to hunt she leaves to start a new family.
5 – Orangutan
When it comes to homemaking, not even the busiest human mom is a match for the orangutan mom because she builds a new home every single night. That means a lifetime of building more than 30,000 homes from scratch, so at the end of the day she doesn’t have time to hang around.
4 – Hornbill Bird
This mom has the record of staying at home for more time, but for a very obvious reason, she builds her home in the trunk of a tree with her own droppings to avoid the threat of predators around while nurturing her baby for more than 60 days, while dad is freely flying getting the supplies for mom and the baby. The only problem with these sealed confinement is that whatever comes in shoud come out, so she and her baby quickily learn the basics of hygiene.
3 – Elephant Seal
On the islands of the south Antarctic, the show begins when mom comes out to the shores to meet her leading man, he has a big reputation, mainly because he is four times her size. But she is not light weight, on a good day she can weight about like six refrigerators. It is not easy being this big.
For this extreme mom, life certainly is a beach and seems to be easy, but could you imagine to manage being pregnant for about 11 months, almost a year! Eleven months of having to eat for two, so she has to put herself on a especial regime to gain weight, all that fat she put on before giving birth is converted into milk. She losses 20 pounds every day she feeds her baby. So these babies got heavier in as little as four weeks since their birth and their poor moms haven’t eaten a thing!
After one month of dramatic devotion to duty, moms leave the children by their own and go at last to get something to eat.
2 – Octopus
This mom is really something especial! She has to look after 50,000 babies, so she certainly needs each of her eight arms. In the end, it will require the ultimate sacrifice from her. She lives her life at a fast pace, mainly because she has to pack everything in less than a year to ready for becoming a mom.
Going from egg to become an adult in twelve months means eating a lot! And finally, she has to find a secure place where she can lay eggs of her own away from the menacing predators. It’s a full time job, she has to wash gently the eggs with her tentacles everyday, which means, she has no time to eat. It will be 40 days for her children to leave home, so these extreme moms get really hungry.
It has been known that some octupus moms have eaten their own arms rather than leaving the eggs unprotected. Happily enough, at the end she won’t have to suffer from the emptiness syndrome, since she had 50,000 reasons to fight for! Though, the exhaustion would be so hard she won’t even had the strenght to fight for her own life whe she finally frees herself from her kids.
1 – Sea louse
This mom is by all means the most extreme of all moms in the world, thanks to her ungrateful offspring! Who are real psychos in the natural world.
Let’s get real here! Having kids should be the last thing she should do. Since the moment the sea louse male get into the female pants, things go terribly wrong. First, the female is kidnapped by the male and then raped with other females, up to 25 females that are taken hostage altogether. Now they are all pregnant, they have no reason to look forward the birthday unlike us, humans! We even have one especial day for moms to celebrate all she does for us, such is our gratitude to them!
Sadly, we cannot say the same about the psycho sea louse babies, since dozens of them have eaten her mom right from the inside, who kill their own mom as they escape their way from her, literally splitting her apart.
This mother really makes the ultimate sacrifice for her children, so there is no doubt that when it comes to motherhood the sea louse female is the most extreme mom!
