Maternity benefits (Was: Re: Surprise! Babies!)

Theresa (Tiger Spot tiger_spot DeleteThis @hotmail.com) wrote::

<citing me>
>>And I've heard of a study which indicated that female rats
>>that have raised a litter of young are generally more
>>intelligent, self-confident, and mentally-healthy than those
>>that haven't.
>
>As I understand it, that study compared females with litters to
>females kept alone. Having other rats to interact with is definitely
>good for rats' intelligence and so forth, so their results are
>probably just a result of the mothers having other rats to interact
>with, not anything special about having had young.

Ah, the perils of Journalism (or of making assumptions).
*sigh* The news article I read didn't mention (as far as I
noticed or remember) that the Control animals were raised
in solitary confinement, and the importance, to rat
development, of socializing is so well-known that I had
assumed that this had been taken into consideration by the
experimenter (who might or might not have drawn the
conclusions presented by the reporter whose article I
read). So far, I haven't been able to find & read the
published Study, so the Facts aren't entirely clear, but it's
quite possible that my assumption was unwarranted.

On another hand, it seems logical & reasonable that caring
for a litter of young involves a more intense and extended
focus of attention than other/ordinary socializing &
interaction, so there seem to be possibilities concerning
this point. In mouse colonies, at least, other females and
males often assume some of the "maternal" functions.
(I've had occasional male mice that were diligent -- almost
obsessive -- about collecting & shredding paper, building
nests, keeping the young warm, returning them to the nest
when they wandered, & cleaning them -- everything but
providing milk.) I'm left wondering whether this expands
_their_ intellectual & emotional development -- or,
perhaps, is the result of their being advanced beyond the
average in these spheres -- although I think it would be
difficult to distinguish clearly between this and simple
hard-wired instincts that tend to preserve the genes of the
colony/extended-family.

Don Fitch,
also wondering how much (if any) of the above could be
applied to Homo sapiens, but not about to conduct any
experiments to find out.

--