Something I’ve frequently wondered while watching Planet Earth and similar nature shows is whether, after all the work that female animals (particularly mammals) put into in raising their young, that bond persists after the young are grown.
There are a few different cases:
(1) Species where they remain in family groups/packs/herds, so the now-grown child could be in more-or-less-constant contact with the mother (lions? elephants? chimpanzees? various herbivores who live in herds? maybe dolphins/seals?)
(2) Species that are more solitary, or even territorial (big cats other than lions? whales, maybe?)
(3) Pets. My wife and I have two dogs who are about 10. Their mother could easily still be alive at the age or 12 or 13. If they met, would they recognize her?
One further thought: incest. If the dominant male of a pack gets to impregnate all the females, does that include his mother (assuming she’s still of breeding age?)
I’m guessing it is widely different depending upon species and their habits.
FWIW, killer whales live in pods (like packs). Apparently males are in contact with their mothers throughout life, to the extent that the mothers help feed their adult male offspring. Kinda like “Failure to Launch”. There is a high mortality among adult male killer whales in the year after their mother dies. I’m guessing they understand their relationship. So how about the daughters and grand-daughters etc. The females are very long-lived. There were recent reports of the death a ‘famous’ grandma, probably 100+ years old. The males, not so much, living to be about 30. I’ve heard this on Sci Fri and BBC Science Hour podcasts, no other cite from me.
Normally wolves (and dogs) live in packs. They have constant reinforcement of their identities and smells. WAG, I think if a puppy was removed from mama at a very young age, it would (probably) not recognize her, nor its siblings. But dogs do seem to have long memories for individuals, so I may be wrong. No cite.
Actually, you did, and it would have been better if you hadn’t. It’s against the rules to post jokes as the first answer in GQ, not to mention religious jabs. No warning issued, bit refrain from this in the future.
This is anecdotal evidence, and not a case of mother and offspring, but elephants apparently recognize and remember individuals, even after decades-long separations.
In this case, two former circus elephants were sent to separate zoos and encountered each other again 23 years later at an elephant sanctuary in Tennessee. They bellowed at each other in apparent recognition, entwined trunks, and acted as if they were happy to see each other once again.
I accompanied a girlfriend with her dog when we visited the place where the dog was born several years previously and there didn’t appear to be any noticeable connection between the dog and its mother when meeting, from either side. So there’s some anecdotal evidence with no verifiable provability.
The dog, in this instance, would have been separated at puppyhood. One could ponder the same question about humans - at what age would a human child still remember and recognise a parent if they were separated at a young age?
I’ve seen reunions between bio parents and their children that were taken from them at an early age (under 5) after the children became adults. There was no immediate recognition. Introductions had to be made. Without the introductions, these people wouldn’t have even known they were related.
In some social animals, the males leave the group shortly before they reach breeding age, and either join other groups, or die alone, while the females stay together. This would provide protection against most forms of incest.
And I believe that there have been cases of long-separated orangutans recognizing a parent/child when reunited. Of course, they’re close enough to us that it’s not too surprising there.
Racing greyhounds are kept with momma until she weans them (i.e. no forced early weaning), and then the whole litter is moved together into a separate kennel/run. They stay together for the first 6 - 18 months before they’re separated and sent of to various racing kennels and tracks. Sometimes after they’re retired and adopted as pets, people seek out littermates because it sounds fun to reunite the family. The common sentiment is that they don’t seem to recognize each other.
On the other hand, I’m convinced that all greyhounds from all around the world innately know each other, so what looks like “no recognition” to us could simply be them taking for granted that “of course my brother is here today”. (Semi serious about this. I’ve put spanish galgos and american greyhounds who have never met into pens together and they sniff briefly like they would for a few-hours separation and then act like they’ve always known each other. Same for combining “strange” american greyhounds with each other.)
Scientists are gathering a pretty good body of evidence that elephant social systems depend heavily on information being passed mother to daughter through the matriarchal hierarchy. I don’t have a cite (it might have been a Ted Talk, I forget), but in a couple of cases they documented that after environmentalists culled all the adults from a couple of herds to “manage the population”, the remaining members of the herd no longer knew where the best foraging or water holes were, and they lost their decades-long migration paths. It seems that the famed “elephants never forget” is true and also what keeps their entire social structure working and healthy.
Anecdotal, but my pet cat managed to get pregnant before I got her in to be neutered. I gave away her kittens at about 2-months-old. Two went to a friend living in the next town. Several months later, I visited my friend at home, and brought the mother cat with to see her offspring. Big mistake – they didn’t seem to recognize her at all, and with hissing & growls indicated their objection to a foreigner coming into their house.
This seems to be common with domestic cats – after a period of separation, they no longer recognize either their mother or their littermates. (And males & females of the same litter will mate incestuously, if given the chance – whether raised separately or kept together .)
When I was a kid I got a puppy from a guy in my neighborhood and about a year or two later he brought the mother by my house. Now I don’t know for sure if he recognized her but he majorly perked up in an uncharacteristic fashion when he smelled her he seemed to act very odd and excited and he wouldn’t leave her alone, the mother on the other hand seemed extremely annoyed and tried to bite him eventually. Maybe her doggy way of saying cut the cord dude.
Hi darling. I can’t believe you’re watching that show without me. In Karen Pryor’s book Reaching the Animal Mind, she relays an anecdote about some cows in Europe that were left to revert to “wild” habits. One bull was observed feeding near an older cow every day at around the same time… lunching with his mother!
I think many of these anecdotes need controls. OK, pool’s dog was excited to see his mother, but did he get similarly excited every time that any other dog came by? Would Melbourne’s lab have invited just any pooch in for lunch? Maybe they’re just very friendly and hospitable.
Two of the cats who live at my mom’s house are (to the best of our knowledge) siblings, and get along with each other far better than most cats do. But they’ve never been separated for any significant period of time, either (beyond when one or the other of them decides to go cat-wandering for a few days).
I can’t address the OP’s actual question. But I noticed an interesting linguistic side issue.
The word “child” seems out of place there. IOW, at least to me, “child” is offspring of human, not offspring of critter. A better word choice might have been offspring or young or descendant.
OTOH, saying *that *dog / sheep / whale is the parent of this one sounds completely normal to me. So “parent” works on all species, but “child” doesn’t.
Likewise “mother” and “father” seem to work OK on critters, but “son” or “daughter” are limited to humans.
Hmmm.
I’m not nit picking on the OP. Just commenting on how weird English (or at least my understanding of it) is.
In one of James Herriot’s books, he describes an incident in which a grown bull was lured from a pasture by sending his mother out to get him.
Those stories were “based on” his experiences but not (necessarily) actual events so I wouldn’t go the bank with it. But he was a vet and it would make sense if he tried to be true-to-life in details of this sort.