I was reading in the most recent Life magazine about a cat who found three orphaned baby squirrels and carried them home to raise with the rest of her litter of kittens. A few days later, the resident basset hound carried the squirrels back to her bed and began nursing them herself (interesting note: she had no litter of pups, and had never had a litter before). Squirrel, kitten, puppy, bah. They’re babies, I’ll raise 'em.
Two questions about this: 1. Does this phenomenom happen in nature with nondomesticated species? There are the legends of “wolf-boy” etc., but I’m speaking more about bobcats taking home bunnies, etc. It just sounds like confusion due to watered down instinct.
2. Once these squirrels mature, will the mother cat and/or dog then suddenly see them as prey? Or will these squirrels always be a “child” of theirs in their limited minds?
Yes, this sort of thing does happen in nature. A good example are birds that are “nest parasites” like the cuckoo or cowbird (I’m trying to remember this off the top of my head so please forgive me and correct me if I’ve named the wrong birds). They lay their eggs in the nest of another bird, and the other bird cares for their offspring as it would its own. The obvious advantage is that the cuckoo or cowbird gets their young cared for at no cost to themselves. Often the young cowbird or cuckoo will grow faster and push the biological children in the nest out to further its advantage.
To try to answer your second question; that depends on the animal. (WAG warning! WAG warning! WAG to follow: ) If the adoptive mother has already somehow mistaken accepted an incorrect search image for her ‘children,’ then my guess is that she would continue to recognize them as ‘children,’ associate their smell with family, and avoid attacking. It is possible that the mother would at some point recognize them as prey, but I’d bet that after spending so much time with them she would not be likely to.
As pets of human beings, the cats and dogs in question were also presumably well-socialized, not to mention well-fed, so I’d think they would tend to have their predatory instincts muted somewhat. I seriously doubt whether a wild cat’s first instinct upon finding three baby squirrels on the ground would be to take them home and nurture them.