Graffiti the Ghost

Mother's day post- 2 days late UPDATE

What can I say? I don't blog on Sundays. Like the lord, I reserve that day for rest. And for going to see sadistic revenge flicks which could, quite frankly, have been just as well viewed on DVD.

I've just recently finished reading Ark Baby, by Liz Jensen, a novel that is built on the premise that every woman in Britain has become simultaneously infertile. Every single one. While people in the rest of the world can carry on reproducing till the cows come home, British woman are SOL.


But just because they're infertile doesn't mean that the maternal instinct has been squelched. A fact to which anyone who's ever witnessed a childless woman with her pets (or a gay man with a chihuahua) can attest, that is one instinct that will not be easily defeated. So, naturally, the ownership of chimpanzees begins to skyrocket. These chimps are dressed up, groomed, and treated exactly like the children they are replacing, and suddenly veterinarians are the new pediatricians.

Everyone knows that the maternal instinct, in all animals, is one of the strongest on earth. So strong, in fact, that it seems to cross the barrier of species, even for an animal that would normally exist as prey for the other. I've come across some pretty interesting examples of this recently.


First, and possibly most striking, from yesterday's news: a human baby adopted by a dog:

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- A newborn baby abandoned in a Kenyan forest was saved by a stray dog who apparently carried her across a busy road and through a barbed wire fence to a shed where the infant was discovered nestled with a litter of puppies, witnesses said Monday. link

UPDATE: happy ending for both baby and dog- they are to be adopted.

And in Asia:

Woman breastfeeds tiger cubs:

Three times a day, the Myanmar housewife goes to the Yangon Zoo where she breastfeeds the hungry black-striped, orange-brown cubs rejected by their natural mother. link

Ouch. Couldn't she just get her dog to do it?

And while we're on that, it seems that dogs just may have the strongest maternal instinct in the animal kingdom. They've been known to suckle their most notorious ememies, the domestic cat, and even to adopt tasty little chicks. Although in the last case I think that pooch was just trying to fatten the chicken up a bit.

Just goes to show you, love knows no species. Some more examples of this:


A cat and a mouse:








A cat and a hedgehog:









and a man and a horse. Isn't that amazing?

posted by Jess @ 3:45 PM