175 Fun Facts About Baby Animals

Why do nursing kittens press their paws rhythmically into their mother's belly?

To get milk flowing: kneading around the teat stimulates the mother's milk, and many cats keep the habit for life, kneading blankets and laps when they feel content.

Platypuses and echidnas belong to which small group of mammals?

Monotremes are the only mammals that lay eggs instead of bearing live young; the platypus and the echidnas are the last of them still living.

What is the name for a baby echidna, the spiny egg-laying mammal of Australia?

A baby echidna is a puggle; it hatches after about ten days and stays in its mother's pouch only until its spines start to grow.

What is the chick of the Atlantic 'sea parrot', a burrow-nesting auk, called?

A young puffin is a puffling; after about six weeks in the burrow it leaves at night and heads straight out to sea.

In the cowboy song 'Git Along, Little Dogies', what is a dogie?

A motherless calf: in one cowboy telling, orphans weaned too early had bellies swollen like sacks of sourdough, 'dough-guts', later worn down to dogie, though the word's real origin is uncertain.

A foal with a donkey father and a horse mother is called what?

Mule: swap the parents, a horse father and a donkey mother, and the foal is a hinny; a mule is almost always sterile, so every one has to be bred from a horse and a donkey.

Meat from a young calf is sold under which name?

Veal comes from calves, often milk-fed ones only a few months old; the word goes back through French to the Latin vitellus, 'little calf'.

Which of these is the name for a baby goat?

A baby goat is a kid, from Old Norse kið; the word was not used as slang for a human child until around the 1590s.

What is the young of a small deer species, such as a white-tailed deer, called?

A young deer is a fawn; for its first weeks it lies flat and hidden in cover while its mother feeds elsewhere, returning only to nurse it.

What is a group of chicks hatched together and cared for by one mother called?

Brood is the word for young hatched at one time and reared together; it also gave us the verb for a hen sitting on her eggs, and for a person sitting gloomily on a worry.

What term describes a hatching chick's first crack through its eggshell?

Pipping begins the escape: the chick then turns inside the egg, cutting its way round the shell until it can push itself out.

What is a young male chicken called?

Cockerel chicks look so much like their sisters on hatching that hatcheries rely on trained chick sexers, a skill that takes long practice, to tell them apart.

What is the young of the United States' national bird called?

A young eagle is an eaglet; a young bald eagle is mostly dark brown, streaked with white, and does not gain the white head and tail until about its fifth year.

What is a young swan called?

Cygnet comes, through French, from the Latin for swan, cygnus; the drab down explains why the misfit in Andersen's fairy tale was a swan all along.

What is a young mallard called?

Duckling: a mallard duckling can swim as soon as it hatches, and the hen soon leads her family to water and never returns to the nest.

What is a baby goose called?

A baby goose is a gosling; the adults moult their flight feathers while it grows, so the whole family is grounded until the gosling can fly.

What is a baby fish called?

Fry are baby fish; a salmon becomes one when it leaves the gravel nest it hatched in and starts swimming about to find its own food.

Which whale's calf is born dark grey and takes years to turn white all over?

Beluga calves are born grey and darken further in their first month, then slowly pale, becoming white only as they reach maturity.

What is the small, sharp bump on a hatching chick's beak, used to chip out of the shell, called?

The egg tooth is not a real tooth but a hard knob on the tip of the beak, and once the chick has hatched it falls off or is absorbed.

Which animal is a cheetah cub's long silvery back mantle thought to mimic?

Honey badger: the long silvery mantle may make a cub look like the notoriously fierce animal, so predators leave it alone, and it also helps to hide the cub in the open.

What is a young bird called once it has grown its flight feathers and left the nest?

Fledgling comes from 'fledge', to grow the feathers needed for flight; even after leaving the nest it often cannot fly well yet.

From which females in the pride may a young lion suckle?

Any that are nursing: the lionesses of a pride often give birth around the same time and rear their young together, sharing the suckling between them.

On a pedigree, what is a young animal's mother called?

Dam is simply an old form of 'dame', meaning lady or mother, and the male parent on the same pedigree is the sire.

What is the gilled, tailed larval stage of a frog or toad called?

Tadpole literally means 'toad-head', from Middle English tadde, toad, and pol, head: at this stage the animal looks like a head with a tail.

What is a newly hatched web-spinning arachnid called?

Spiderlings hatch looking like tiny adults; many then climb to a high point, let out silk threads and sail away on the air, a trick called ballooning.

What is a baby butterfly or moth called?

A caterpillar is the larva of a butterfly or moth; it is built to eat and grow, shedding its skin several times as it outgrows it.

Silkworms feed almost entirely on the leaves of which tree?

Mulberry leaves are the silkworm's food: it is the larva of a moth kept for silk for so long that the adult can no longer fly.

What is the proper term for a dog giving birth to a litter?

Whelping takes its name from whelp, an old word for a dog's young; breeders set out a whelping box for it, with sides low enough for the mother to step in and out.

What is the floating, jelly-like mass of eggs laid by a frog called?

Spawn is the word for the eggs of frogs, fish and shellfish alike, and it also gave English a verb for producing offspring in huge numbers.

What can a kangaroo mother do for two young of different ages at once?

Make two kinds of milk: one teat feeds a newborn fixed in the pouch while another gives a different milk to an older youngster that hops back to suckle.

What do falconers call a young hawk that has left the nest but cannot yet fly?

A brancher is a young raptor that has left the nest and hops between branches before its first flight; a passager is a first-year bird trapped on migration, a haggard an adult.

What is a baby domestic pigeon called?

Squab: both parents, the father as well as the mother, feed it a rich 'milk' made in the lining of the crop.

Young geese feed beside their parents from their first days, eating mostly what?

Grass is a goose's staple, which is why mown lawns in parks and suburbs have helped Canada goose numbers boom.

What is a baby llama or alpaca called?

Cria is Spanish cría, the young of an animal, from criar, 'to suckle or rear', a word that goes back to the Latin creare, 'to create'.

What is a newborn quill-bearing rodent called?

A porcupette is born with soft, bendable quills, which spares its mother a painful birth; they harden over its first few days.

Which insect's young spend 13 or 17 years underground before emerging all at once?

Periodical cicadas of eastern North America feed on tree-root sap underground for 13 or 17 years, then surface together in vast numbers to breed.

What is a young eel called?

Elver is a worn-down form of 'eel-fare', literally 'eel-journey', the old name for the mass run of young eels from the sea up a river.

Which baby mammal is born with soft white spines hidden under swollen skin?

A hoglet is a baby hedgehog; its first white spines lie under fluid-filled skin at birth and push through within hours as the skin shrinks back.

What is a crowded breeding colony of seals or penguins, where the young are raised, called?

Rookery first meant a nesting colony of rooks, birds of the crow family, and the name spread to any packed breeding ground of seabirds or seals.

Which of these snakes gives birth to live young instead of laying eggs?

Boa constrictor: besides bearing live young, a captive female has even given birth without mating, her babies having no father at all.

What is a baby oyster or mussel called?

Spat are baby oysters that have just settled: each cements itself to a hard surface for life, often an old oyster shell, so growers scatter shells to catch them.

Which term describes a baby turkey?

A baby turkey is a poult; poults leave the nest within a day of hatching and can already walk and feed themselves, though the hen guards them for months.

Newborn Dalmatians are what colour?

Pure white: the famous spots are missing at birth and only begin to appear a week or two later.

What is a young hare called?

A young hare is a leveret; hares do not burrow, and leverets are left in a shallow depression in the grass called a form.

What is the young of the bird famous for its fanned, eyespotted tail train called?

A young peafowl is a peachick; only the male with the eyespotted train is properly a peacock, the female a peahen.

Which leggy bird's chick is called a colt, like a young horse?

Crane chicks are called colts; a sandhill crane colt is able to leave the nest within a day of hatching.

What is a young salmon in its striped freshwater stage called?

Parr: the dark bars along its flanks, known as parr marks, camouflage it on the stream bed until it turns silver and heads for the sea.

What is a young cod called?

A young cod is a codling; fishing rules set a minimum size for cod so that the juveniles are left in the sea instead of being harvested.

What is a baby crab called in its larval stage?

A crab larva is a zoea, a spiny free-swimming stage that later moults into a megalopa before settling as a tiny crab.

What is the first free-swimming larval stage of a barnacle called?

A barnacle hatches as a nauplius, a one-eyed swimming larva that moults into a cyprid before cementing itself head-first to a rock or hull.

In the pet and reptile-food trade, what is a hairless newborn mouse called?

A hairless newborn mouse is a pinkie, named for its bare skin; once fur appears it is a fuzzy, then a hopper, then a weanling.

What is a joey that has left the pouch for good but still suckles called?

A joey that has permanently left the pouch but returns to suckle is a young-at-foot; it may share its mother with a newborn still in the pouch.

What is a second-year male fallow deer, carrying its first plain spike antlers, called?

A pricket is named for those spikes, the word being a diminutive of 'prick'; the red deer equivalent, a young stag with its first antlers, is a brocket.

Tinned Norwegian 'sardines' are often the young of which fish?

Herring: the young fish, called sild from the Norwegian word for herring, are canned and sold as sardines, a name that covers several small oily fish.

What is a young octopus or squid called?

A paralarva is a young octopus or squid drifting as plankton; it looks like a miniature adult rather than a true larva, hence the name.

Before becoming a drifting adult, a young jellyfish lives fixed to the seabed as what?

Polyp: the larva settles on the seabed and grows into one, which later buds off tiny free-swimming ephyrae that grow into adult jellyfish.

What is a young newt called during its land-dwelling stage?

A juvenile newt living on land is an eft; the eastern newt's 'red eft' is bright orange, warning predators of its toxic skin.

What word describes young, like newborn mice and songbird chicks, that arrive blind and helpless?

Altricial comes from the Latin for a nurse or nourisher, because such young must be fed and kept warm by their parents for some time.

Which fish can release 300 million eggs at a time, more than any other vertebrate?

Ocean sunfish eggs are tiny and are simply released into the open water to be fertilised there, then left to drift and take their chances.

What do pigeon fanciers call a young bird not yet weaned off crop milk?

Pigeon fanciers call a young pigeon a squeaker, for the sound it makes when begging; both parents feed it crop milk from the lining of the crop.

What is the smallest, weakest animal in a litter called?

Runt: Wilbur, the pig in Charlotte's Web, is the runt of his litter, saved from the axe when Fern pleads for his life.

What is a female pig that has not yet bred called?

A gilt is a young sow that has not yet had a litter; the name is Old Norse, gyltr, and has nothing to do with gold gilt.

What is a young female chicken called?

A pullet is a hen less than a year old; the word comes from a French diminutive meaning a young chicken and goes back to the Latin pullus, a young animal.

A young female cow that has not yet bred is called what?

A heifer is a young cow that has not had a calf; one born twin to a bull is usually sterile and known as a freemartin.

A litter of kittens is known by which old term?

A litter of kittens is a kindle, from an old verb 'to kindle' meaning to give birth, still used of rabbits.

Which way round is a baby dolphin usually born?

Tail first is the usual way for a dolphin, though head-first births happen too; its dorsal fin and tail flukes are soft and floppy at birth and stiffen only later.

A young female goat is called what?

A doeling is a young female goat; a young male is a buckling, a castrated male a wether, and an adult female a nanny or doe.

What nickname is given to the leathery egg case of a skate or shark found washed up on beaches?

A mermaid's purse holds the egg of a skate or one of the egg-laying sharks; many other sharks never lay eggs at all and give birth to live young.

The striped larvae of the monarch butterfly eat only which plant?

Milkweed is poisonous, and the larvae store its toxins, which makes both them and the adult butterflies unpalatable to birds.

Young beavers are born inside what dome-shaped home of sticks and mud?

A beaver lodge has its living chamber just above the waterline and its entrances below it, so the young are born dry and out of reach of land predators.

Which European toad's father carries strings of eggs wound around his hind legs?

The midwife toad father carries the eggs until they are ready to hatch, then takes them to a pool so the larvae can swim free.

Which pet rodent's babies are born with fur and teeth, able to run about and nibble solid food at once?

Guinea pig young are born unusually well developed for a rodent; most rodents, including hamsters, gerbils and rats, are born naked and helpless.

Which animal teaches its young to handle scorpions by first bringing them ones with the sting removed?

Meerkat adults bite the sting off a scorpion before handing it over, so the young can practise killing dangerous prey without being hurt.

Which shark's unborn young eat their own siblings in the womb, leaving one survivor on each side?

Sand tiger shark embryos grow teeth early, and the largest one in each of the mother's two wombs eats the rest, so she bears just two young.

What is a young weasel called?

Kit is short for 'kitten' and serves for the young of weasels, foxes and other small furred mammals; a mother weasel rears her litter alone.

What is a young chicken raised specifically for its meat called?

Broiler farming in America is often traced to a 1923 mix-up: Delaware's Cecile Steele ordered 50 chicks for eggs, was sent 500 and raised them for meat instead.

What is a tailless amphibian called when it has just grown legs, lost its gills and left the pond?

A froglet is a frog that has just absorbed its tail and left the water; toads produce toadlets at the same stage.

Which mammal almost always gives birth to four genetically identical young from a single egg?

The nine-banded armadillo's single fertilised egg splits into four embryos, so nearly every litter is a set of identical quadruplets sharing one placenta; their armour is still soft at birth.

What are mosquito larvae nicknamed for their jerky swimming when disturbed?

Wrigglers hang at the surface to breathe and jerk away when disturbed; the pupae that follow, which flip through the water, are known as tumblers.

What is a young fly called?

A fly larva is a maggot; doctors still place disinfected ones on stubborn wounds, where they eat away dead and infected tissue and help the wound to heal.

What is a young grasshopper, locust or cockroach called?

Nymphs hatch looking like small wingless adults and never pass through a pupa; flightless locust nymphs, called hoppers, gather in bands before growing wings and flying off as swarms.

What is the soft, thick-bodied larva of a beetle commonly called?

Grub: many so-called worms are really beetle grubs, including the mealworms sold as pet food and the woodworm that riddles old furniture.

Which bird's chick feeds by thrusting its head deep inside its parent's bill for regurgitated fish?

Pelican chicks are first fed regurgitated fish dropped on the nest floor; after about a week they reach right into the parent's pouch to help themselves.

Besides pigeons, which tall wading bird feeds its chick on crop milk?

Flamingo parents of both sexes feed the chick a 'milk' made in the upper digestive tract, and producing it drains their colour until their bright plumage turns pale.

Where are hippopotamus calves usually born?

Underwater: hippos mate and give birth in the water, and a calf can even suckle beneath the surface, folding back its ears and closing its nostrils.

Which animal's young is born with pale stripes and spots, often likened to a watermelon on legs?

Tapir young of every species share the striped coat, which hides them in the dappled light of the forest.

How do adult wolves carry meat back to unweaned young waiting at the den?

Swallowed, then regurgitated: adults gulp down meat at a kill, travel home and bring it back up for the youngsters, so every member of the pack can help feed a litter.

A liger is the offspring of which two big cats?

A male lion and a tigress produce a liger, which can outgrow both parents to become the largest of all cats; swap the parents and the smaller hybrid is called a tigon.

What do newborn spotted hyenas, born with their eyes already open, often do soon after birth?

Attack their littermates: spotted hyenas are born with their eyes open and their canines already through, and same-sex twins fight so fiercely that the weaker one often dies.

Which marsupial conceives again a day or two before giving birth, so adult females are permanently pregnant?

The swamp wallaby manages it with the two wombs every marsupial has: while a full-term young waits to be born from one, a freshly conceived embryo is already settling into the other.

How does a ring-tailed lemur mother carry her newborn during its first two weeks?

Clinging to her belly is how a ring-tailed lemur spends its first week or two; it then moves up top to ride piggyback, and the whole troop, not just the mother, helps to mind it.

What is the antibody-rich first milk a mother mammal produces for her newborn called?

Colostrum carries a mother's antibodies to newborn farm animals, which get none across the placenta and can absorb them through the gut only in the first day or so of life.

What colour are the large eggs that a male emu incubates alone for eight weeks?

Dark green and glossy, emu eggs look rather like giant avocados; the female wanders off once they are laid and the male sits for about eight weeks, hardly eating or drinking.

What do wasp larvae give the adult workers that feed them chewed-up insects?

A sugary liquid is the larvae's side of the bargain: adult wasps can feed only on sugars, so they hunt insects not for themselves but to trade with their young for this sweet drink.

What colour is a flamingo chick's down when it hatches?

Flamingo chicks hatch with grey-white down and a straight bill; the pink colour comes later from carotenoid pigments in their food.

Unlike the five-armed adult, a starfish larva's body has what kind of symmetry?

Bilateral, like ours: a starfish larva has a left and a right side and swims freely, and only when it settles on the seabed does it rebuild itself into the five-part adult.

Where does a sand dollar larva live?

Open sea is home to the tiny see-through larva, which has arms and looks nothing like its parents; only once the adult body starts to form inside it does it sink and take up life on the seabed.

How does a newborn kangaroo get from the birth canal to its mother's pouch?

It climbs up unaided: blind, hairless and about 2.5 cm long, the newborn hauls itself through its mother's fur with its forelimbs and reaches the pouch within minutes.

About how long is a red kangaroo pregnant before giving birth?

About 33 days is all a red kangaroo's pregnancy lasts, so the newborn arrives blind and hairless at under a gram and does most of its growing during some six months in the pouch.

What ability lets a female kangaroo keep a pregnancy on hold until her pouch is free?

Embryonic diapause keeps a fertilised egg waiting as a tiny ball of cells while an older youngster suckles, restarting it when the pouch empties; as she mates again within days of a birth, a mother is almost always pregnant.

The koala's genus name Phascolarctos comes from Greek words meaning what?

Phascolarctos means 'pouch bear', from Greek phaskolos (pouch) and arktos (bear), though the koala is a marsupial, not a bear.

How do newly hatched platypuses feed, as their mother has no teats?

Lapping milk from pores in her fur, the young feed where it oozes from two patches of skin on the mother's belly; she nurses them like this for three to four months inside the nesting burrow.

A male seahorse gives birth after his mate does what?

Lays her eggs in his pouch: after a courtship dance she passes him hundreds of eggs, which he carries in the closed pouch on his tail until tiny, fully formed seahorses emerge.

How does a pregnant male seahorse finally release his young into the sea?

With jerking body contractions: he bends sharply back and forth, popping the young out of the pouch a few at a time, and is often ready to take a new batch of eggs by the next morning.

While an emperor penguin father incubates the egg through the Antarctic winter, where is the mother?

Feeding at sea: after laying, the female hands the egg over and treks back across the ice to open water, returning with a full belly around hatching time some two months later.

How do incubating emperor penguins survive months of Antarctic blizzards without food?

Packing into a shuffling huddle of hundreds or thousands, the birds keep trading places between the warm middle and the windy edge, yet a fasting male still ends the winter many kilograms lighter.

Roughly how much does a newborn elephant weigh?

Around 120 kg is a big newborn elephant, with 90 to 120 kg usual, yet it is quickly on its feet and walking so that it can follow its mother and the family herd.

About how long does an elephant's pregnancy last?

About 22 months is the average, anywhere from a year and a half to two years, and a mother then waits several more years before her next birth, so she raises only a handful of young in her life.

What does a wild giant panda usually do with newborn twins?

Raises only one: twins arrive in about half of panda births, but in the wild the mother rears one and the other soon dies, so zoo keepers swap twins back and forth, letting her nurse each in turn.

About how much does a newborn giant panda weigh?

About 100 g is typical for a newborn giant panda, which is about the size of a stick of butter; blind and helpless, it is suckled up to 14 times a day, for as long as 30 minutes at a time.

How does a newborn whale drink its mother's milk?

She squirts it in, straight into the youngster's mouth; whale milk is so rich in fat that it is as thick as toothpaste, which helps the newborn pile on blubber fast.

A newborn harp seal keeps its fluffy white coat for about how long?

2 to 3 weeks is all the white coat lasts: once weaned, the youngster is left alone on the ice, where it sheds the fluff for a silvery coat and teaches itself to swim.

Where does a polar bear give birth in midwinter?

Snow den: the mother digs in during autumn and gives birth there to blind young of about 600 g; fed on her fatty milk, they are ready to walk out beside her in spring.

Young polar bears stay with their mother for up to two and a half years, learning to hunt what?

Seals, above all ringed seals, are a polar bear's main prey, and a youngster needs up to two and a half years at its mother's side to learn to catch them on the sea ice; penguins live only at the other end of the world.

Why does a sea otter mother wrap her young in kelp before diving?

To anchor it: the kelp stops a floating youngster drifting off while its mother is under water, and adults use the same trick, wrapping themselves in the fronds when they want to rest.

What do shepherds call an orphaned newborn that they rear by hand?

Cosset first meant a pet, hand-reared member of the flock, and the pampering such an animal got is probably what turned the word into a verb meaning to spoil or fuss over.

Konrad Lorenz studied imprinting mainly with which birds?

Greylag geese that hatched in an incubator followed Lorenz as if he were their mother, fixing on the first moving thing they saw; Douglas Spalding and Oskar Heinroth had described the effect before him.

What do breeders call an unspayed female cat?

Queen is the breeders' word for a female cat kept for breeding; unusually, she does not release her eggs on a regular cycle but only after she has mated.

About how long is a dog's pregnancy?

9 weeks, 63 days counted from ovulation, is the rule; counted from mating it can seem days longer, because sperm can survive for days inside the mother before fertilising the eggs.

Horses are 'precocial'; what does that mean for their newborns?

Born relatively mature and mobile, a newborn horse usually stands within an hour and can keep up with the herd a few hours later, as a grazing animal hunted by predators must.

About how long is a mare pregnant before giving birth?

About 48 weeks, or 11 months, is the average, but healthy pregnancies run from under 10 months to more than 13, so a due date is only ever a rough guide.

A young male horse left uncastrated grows up to be called what?

Stallion is the name an uncastrated male takes at about four; in free-living herds, young stallions with no mares of their own roam in all-male 'bachelor' bands until they can win some.

Ducks' young are 'nidifugous', Latin for doing what to the nest?

Fleeing it: the word joins Latin nidus, nest, and fugere, to flee; leaving so early, such young bond with the first moving thing they see, which is normally their mother.

Which mound-building birds hatch so advanced that some can fly on their first day?

Megapodes bury their eggs in warm mounds and walk away; each chick spends up to two days digging itself out alone, fully feathered, and in some species can fly that same day.

What does a newly hatched common cuckoo do to its foster parents' eggs?

Push them out of the nest: soon after hatching, the naked cuckoo heaves every other egg and any host young over the rim, so its foster parents pour all their food into it alone.

What helps a common cuckoo's egg go unnoticed by its hosts?

Matching colours: female cuckoos fall into lines called gentes, each tied to one host species and laying eggs coloured and patterned to pass for that host's.

How do newly hatched sea turtles know which way the ocean lies?

They head for the brightest horizon, which on a dark beach is the night sky over the sea; street and hotel lights can fool them into crawling inland instead.

Alligator eggs incubated at 30 °C produce which sex?

Females hatch from alligator eggs kept at about 30 °C, while nests only a little warmer turn out mostly males, so whether a mother builds on cool wet marsh or a warmer levee can decide the sex of her young.

How does a mother alligator move her newly hatched young from the nest to the water?

Gently in her mouth: hearing yelps from inside the eggs, she digs open the nest and ferries eight or ten babies at a time to the water, where she opens her jaws and shakes them out.

The word 'caterpillar' probably derives from Old North French words meaning what?

Hairy cat is the probable meaning of the lost Old North French word behind 'caterpillar'; furry larvae often get animal names, and French chenille comes from the Latin for a little dog.

Honeybee larvae reared to become the colony's sole egg-layer are fed copious amounts of what?

Royal jelly is fed to every honeybee larva for its first three days, but only a larva kept on it afterwards develops into the colony's egg-layer; the rest are switched to pollen and honey and become workers.

Which hummingbird, the smallest bird in the world, lays a pair of pea-sized eggs?

The bee hummingbird of Cuba lays two pea-sized eggs in a nest about 2.5 cm across, which the female binds together with cobwebs; she later feeds the young while hovering above it.

A kiwi's egg can be up to what proportion of the female's body weight?

20% of her weight is a figure often given, with some estimates higher, as if a 54 kg woman bore an 11 kg baby; having laid it, the female in most kiwi species leaves the sitting to the male.

The Surinam toad incubates its eggs where?

In pockets on the female's back: the eggs sink into her skin, which grows over them like a honeycomb, and three to five months later fully formed little toads push their way out.

Darwin's frog males brood their young inside what?

Their vocal sac is the nursery: the male guards the eggs for weeks, gulps them in as they start to wriggle, and about six weeks later releases tiny, fully formed frogs.

Newborn lions have what feature that fades as they grow?

Dark spots, sometimes shaped like rosettes, cover a newborn lion and fade with age; for its first weeks the mother hides it away from the pride, carrying it by the scruff to a new den several times a month.

What call does a cheetah mother use to summon her hidden young?

A chirp, short and bird-like, is how a cheetah mother and her young find each other; cheetahs also purr like house cats, but unlike lions and tigers they cannot roar.

Zebra stripes start out which colours on a newborn before darkening?

Brown and white stripes mark a newborn zebra, and stripes matter from the start: it quickly learns its mother's own pattern, which lets it stay close to her in the herd.

What pattern marks the coat of most newborn deer for their first months?

White spots dapple most newborn deer and are usually gone by the first winter; until then the youngster spends its first weeks lying hidden while its mother visits a few times a day to nurse.

Which marsupial bears 20 or more tiny young at once, though at most four can survive?

The Tasmanian devil gives birth to 20 or more young after only three weeks, but its pouch has just four teats, so the first four to latch on are the only ones with a chance.

Why does the wombat's pouch open backwards?

So digging doesn't fill it with soil: a wombat's rear end is armour too, and when a predator gives chase she dives headfirst into a tunnel and blocks it with her tough rump.

What do newly hatched platypuses have that the adults have lost?

Teeth: the young have small molar-like milk teeth, but they drop out around the time the animals leave the burrow, and adults grind their food between horny pads instead.

Which bird lays the largest egg of any living animal?

The ostrich lays eggs about 15 cm long and weighing well over a kilogram; several hens lay in one shared scrape, and the dominant hen keeps her own eggs in the centre.

How are hares' young different from rabbits' at birth?

Furred with eyes open, a newborn hare can fend for itself within hours because it is born above ground in a shallow hollow, while rabbits arrive naked and blind in the shelter of a burrow.

Which nickname is given to the pit-digging larva of the antlion?

Doodlebug is the American nickname for the antlion larva, which digs a cone-shaped pit in dry sand and lurks at the bottom for ants that slide in; the name is said to come from the squiggly trails it leaves.

Young salmon become which silvery stage before heading to sea?

Smolts are young salmon that have turned silvery as their bodies adapt to salt water, after anything from six months to three years in the stream; few of the eggs laid ever get this far.

How does a salmon find its home stream?

Smell: a young salmon memorises the scent of its home water on the way to sea, and years later it follows its nose upriver; out in the ocean it is thought to steer by the Earth's magnetic field.

European eels cross the Atlantic to spawn in which sea?

The Sargasso Sea was pinpointed by Danish biologist Johannes Schmidt, who from 1904 netted eel larvae across the Atlantic and found them smaller and smaller the closer he came to it.

Baby eels drift across the Atlantic as transparent larvae shaped like what?

A leaf is the shape of an eel's flat larva, called a leptocephalus; it drifts on ocean currents for up to a year before slimming into a see-through miniature eel off the coast of Europe.

The water-dwelling young of dragonflies and mayflies share what name with the freshwater spirits of Greek myth?

Naiads were the spirits of springs and streams, and the name passed to the water-living young of dragonflies and mayflies; a dragonfly naiad hunts by shooting out a hinged lower lip to grab small fish.

At about what age is a young chimpanzee weaned?

4 years is typical, with weaning anywhere between three and five; until then the youngster often rides on its mother's back when she travels, and it stays close to her for years afterwards.

What do flightless three-week-old guillemots do?

Leap to the sea: the half-grown youngster flutters down from its cliff ledge with its father, who then feeds and guards it on the water for weeks until it can fly.

The axolotl is 'neotenic', meaning it does what?

Matures without metamorphosis: the axolotl breeds while still a gilled, water-living larva, yet a dose of thyroid hormone can make it transform into a land-dwelling salamander.

A butterfly's bare, hard-cased pupa is known by what special name?

Chrysalis comes from the Greek for gold, after the metallic sheen on many butterfly pupae; a cocoon is something else, the silk wrapper that most moths spin around theirs.

Before birth, what do great white shark embryos feed on inside their mother?

Unfertilised eggs keep the embryos fed late in the pregnancy, after they have used up their yolk and a milky fluid from the womb; about a year on, the mother gives birth to between two and ten live young.

About how long is a sow pregnant before her piglets are born?

About 115 days is the usual figure, within a range of roughly 110 to 120, which is short enough for a sow to raise two litters in a single year.

Why do young Komodo dragons spend their first months living up in trees?

To avoid being eaten by adults: Komodo dragons are cannibals, so the young take to the trees, which only light youngsters climb well, and even roll in dung to put the adults off.

A cow's gestation period is about how long?

Nine months is a cow's pregnancy, much the same as a woman's; dairy cows have to be bred again and again because a cow makes milk only after she has given birth.

Meat from a sheep over about two years old is called what?

Mutton is the meat of a fully grown sheep, over about two years old, darker and tougher than younger meat; on South Asian menus, though, 'mutton' usually means goat.

A hybrid of a ewe and a male goat is jokingly known as what?

A sheep-goat hybrid is jokingly a geep; true hybrids are rare because sheep have 54 chromosomes and goats 60, and most are stillborn.

What is the set of eggs a bird lays and incubates at one time called?

A clutch is one nesting's worth of eggs; if it is lost or taken early, many birds simply lay another, a habit breeders used to double the output of rare California condors.

Which mammal lives in colonies where one breeding female bears all the young?

The naked mole-rat lives underground in colonies where a single female and one to three males breed, while the other members, all non-breeding helpers, dig the tunnels, find food and defend the nest.

What bodily function does a newborn cat need its mother's licking to trigger?

Urination: for its first few weeks a young cat can pass neither urine nor droppings until its mother's licking sets off the reflex, so hand-reared orphans have to be gently rubbed by their carers instead.

Which great ape has the longest gap between births, typically six to eight years?

Orangutan mothers give birth only every six to eight years because each youngster may go on nursing for six years or more and stays at her side learning where and what to eat in the forest.

A newborn deer takes its first steps within about how long of birth?

Twenty minutes is about all a newborn deer needs to get to its feet, yet it spends most of its first month lying hidden and only then starts following its mother to feed.

Young dogs start eating solid food at about what age?

One month is roughly when young dogs start on solid food, sometimes food the mother brings up for them, as she begins refusing to nurse; they are fully weaned at about eight to ten weeks.

Roughly how much weight does a newborn blue whale gain each day?

About 90 kg a day is what a nursing blue whale gains on its mother's rich milk, so a newborn some 7 metres long is about 16 metres when it is weaned, only seven or eight months later.

What colour is a newborn giant panda?

Pink and blind at birth, a giant panda shows no markings at all for its first week or two; then the skin darkens where the black fur is about to grow.

Where does a male emperor penguin keep the egg while incubating it through the Antarctic winter?

Balanced on top of his feet and covered by a fold of belly skin, the egg stays at about 38 °C for 65 to 75 days; he cannot go off to feed while holding it, so he simply fasts.

What happens to a female octopus once the eggs guarded in her den finally hatch?

She dies: once her eggs are laid a female octopus stops feeding and wastes away while guarding and cleaning them, lasting only until about the time they hatch; males die soon after mating.

How does a mother scorpion carry her newborn young while their exoskeletons harden?

On her back: unlike most arachnids, which lay eggs, scorpions bear live young that climb aboard at once and ride there until their first moult, anything from five to 25 days later.

Why does a newborn sea otter bob like a cork?

Its groomed baby fur traps so much air that the newborn cannot sink: the mother licks and fluffs it for hours, then can leave it bobbing at the surface while she dives for food.

What is 'pap', which a mother koala produces to prepare her young for a eucalyptus diet?

A liquid faeces rich in bacteria, pap hands the mother's gut microbes on to her young, which needs them to digest eucalyptus leaves that are toxic to most mammals.

About how tall is a newborn giraffe when it first stands up?

About 1.8 metres, taller than most people, is normal for a newborn giraffe; its mother gives birth standing, so its life begins with a two-metre drop that snaps the cord and starts it breathing.

Kiwi parents never feed their newly hatched young, so what sustains it at first?

Leftover yolk in its belly from the huge egg keeps a newly hatched kiwi going, so it can rest in the burrow for its first few days before heading out to find food for itself.