Lioness adopts a baby oryx! (1 Viewer)

[Max Leung]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/wor...00/1746828.stm
Wow! Sad, sad story. Anyone want to debate the supremacy of human emotions when compared to the animal kingdom now?

 

[Scott Weinberg]

Nice story, but I think you're mistaking "maternal instinct" for "emotion". Damn boy lion! Bad Kitty!

 

[Julie K]

Baby oryx, yummmmm....

 

[Jay H]

Hmmm, can I stuff one into a 2.5gal aquarium???
Jay

 

[Julie K]

I should say that I agree with Scott - this sounds more like a displaced maternal instinct. Such cases are not common, but not unheard of either.

 

[Henry Carmona]

Now that was weird!

 

[Shayne Lebrun]

Reports say the full-grown lioness came across the oryx two weeks ago in the Samburu Game Reserve, scaring off its mother.

Didn't we see that when Lex and Tom were in the hot air balloon a few episodes back?

 

[Max Leung]

You mean Lexx? Eeep.
Ok ok...maternal instincts are a dime-a-dozen!
Notice how chicks coo over cute little animals all the time? "Oh look, that puppy with the oversized head, huge paws, short body, and baby fat is sooooooo cute!" and "Oh look at the cute little dwarf bunny, with the big head, small body, and big paws and ears!".
Not to encourage stereotypes or anything.

 

[Julie K]

Notice how chicks coo over cute little animals all the time?

Funny, I've never known chicks to coo over baby animals. Usually they just start peeping and run for cover if confronted with a baby puppy or something.
But seriously, maternal, and in species where the male helps tend the young (like ours), paternal instinct in mammals seems to key on large rounded foreheads and large eyes. The characteristics that many find 'cute' in human babies is seen in other mammalian young.
I'll grant that many young women do tend to gush extensively over the young of other species that show these characterstics in an especially strong way (kittens and puppies especially). I'm sure there may be a inborn aspect to this, but I would also wager a strong cultural component as well. Of course, it should also be remembered that to say "all women" is a gross oversimplification. For every lioness that adopts a baby oryx, there are many mother cats like the one I had who would devise ways to kill her offspring (dropping them into the toilet was an interesting one - I found them in time.) Likewise, there are human females with zero to low maternal instinct. I personally do not find human babies, nor indeed other mammalian babies, to be cute. Some I find to be downright creepy. You'd have a hard time finding something I'd 'coo' over!
BTW, that article quoted is wrong when it says oryx are small antelopes. There are several species of oryx (this one was a Beisa oryx) and none can be considered small. They are around 4 1/2 feet tall at the shoulder and weigh several hundred pounds. They also sport large sharp horns which they can expertly use. Here's a couple of photos of an adult Beisa oryx.

 

[Marc S Kessler]

I could swear I just saw on the news that nature took over and one of the lions consumed the antelope. Sorry!

 

[Shayne Lebrun]

They wern't raising it, they were FATTENING IT UP! The lions have discovered the idea of animal husbandry!

 

[Max Leung]

Hey Julie. I was talking about women in general...the normal ones, not the crazy wacko ones that drown their own kids in bathtubs and whatnot! (stealth happy face: ). Now, of course, maternal instincts seem strongest if the baby is wanted. If the mother perceives, perhaps instinctively, that she cannot take care of her offspring, than it is extremely likely that they will abandon or even murder the young. In rare cases a long-term emotional disorder (I define it as: the mother has no rational reason for abandoning the childen) will result in senseless deaths of her offspring. Stir in media frenzy, and now all mothers are suspect. :rolleyes
The (non-human) mother may also eat the weaklings in the litter too. This saves her precious milk so that the stronger ones can survive.
In the case of the human population, yep, it is quite possible for "chicks" (of the non-yellow-feathered kind) to not coo over anything that looks cute. Perhaps, like most men, they won't bother unless the kid shares half of their DNA! Could be a smell thing...most mammals use spell to identify their offspring...humans may not be much different.
So yeah, there is an explanation for lack of maternal instincts, in a general, population-wide, sense. Individuals will always be different. Analogous to saying, "Dogs are typically brown or dark brown in color", with the implicit acknowledgement that the white-furred and annoyingly yappy poodle, "Fluffy", is mind-bogglingly allowed to exist!

 

[Julie K]

Individuals will always be different. Analogous to saying, "Dogs are typically brown or dark brown in color", with the implicit acknowledgement that the white-furred and annoyingly yappy poodle, "Fluffy", is mind-bogglingly allowed to exist!

That's exactly the point I was trying to make. Your first statement read more like "All dogs are always brown or dark brown" instead of the above. I was just trying to get that 'typically' modifier thrown into the discussion. It's an important word, I believe.

While the super-mom with super instincts certainly does exist (as with this lioness), I think there is a sizeable population of those with low or zero maternal instincts. Of course, animals will kill and eat their young in emergency situations, however others are just bad mothers. My cat for instance. She was well fed and generally all around pampered. She just hated kittens. And unlike us humans, she couldn't do too much about not having them in the first place (until some timely human intervention, that is). I would probably be one sick puppy and rename her Andrea if she were still alive.

But until very recently in the West, a woman was pretty much in the same position as my cat. She was expected to have children and that was pretty much her lot whether she really liked them or not. Doubtless the ones with a better maternal instinct had more/more healthy offspring, but the variation was not lost. Today, only those who really want a child need have one, except that society still pushes the "woman = mother" role, with the added pressure than a woman should be able to do it all and be super-mom and super-executive and super-whatever all rolled up into one. People still look askance at women who don't like babies and I think a lot of woman are pushed into childbearing who really shouldn't have them.

But things are so much easier if you just adopt a baby oryx. If you get tired of it, you can eat it. I've eaten an adult scimitar-horned oryx, so I'm sure the babies are just as delicious.

 

[Max Leung]

I cannot find a single Oryx at my neighborhood grocery store. Ugh. Maybe it is too cold up here in Canada to keep them in stock!

Do they feed ground-up-oryxes back to the oryxes, like they did/do to cows? I don't want to catch mad-oryx disease! That would suck!

 

[Charles J P]

the lioness was grief-stricken when she awoke to realise what had happened.

riiiiiight :rolleyes

 

[David Susilo]

I'm not really following the news... so... the lioness ate the baby oryx?

 

[Max Leung]

Here's a hint David: Read the original article.

 

[David Susilo]

well duh! How can I be so daft!

ps: I read the article (partially) from a news service relay from Australia, but didn't bother reading the whole thing

 

[Max Leung]

Instead of making a new thread, I'll just revive this one:
Mixed-up Lioness Adopts Another Baby Oryx:
She's at it again!

You may remember the story from January of the lioness in a Kenyan national park that 'adopted' a baby oryx -- normally a prey species. Well, the lioness has done it again. Actually, it's the third time, as gamekeepers took away a calf the lioness adopted in February.

 

[Max Leung]

*Ahem*
Link Removed

Kamuniak, a lioness in northern Kenya's Samburu National Park has adopted her fifth new-born oryx this year, a Kenya Wildlife Service warden told Reuters Monday.

(Waiting for the obligatory "Back from the dead" comment from NickSo. )