Biologists
call biparental those species in which the male invest a great effort
in raising his offspring, understanding that the female always does her
share.
As I see it, this label, biparenting, is
somehow flawed since in some (very strange) cases it is the father the
one who makes almost all the job, while the female is very relaxed in
this respect and looking for future good fathers (see
Syngnathidae and
Common Suriname toad if you are interested in two examples. Also if you have time, mood, and an translator you can read this
Feliz día del padre which
is a sort of satyric post I wrote to reply a short sighted lamer that
claimed that as a biologist she knew well that parenting was unknown in
animals) . What I mean is that some sort of single fathering also exist
in some species.
Coming to your question, in
spite that good parents are by no means unknown among mammals, the truth
is that birds practice this modality much more enthusiastically than
mammals (about 6% of mammals in front of an overhelming 80% in birds.
Source:
Paternal care). Male
mammals, certainly, have it easy to mate and go, since females have the
tasks of pregnancies and breastfeeding and...well...such a long time
between sex and a litter...who's gonna guess that should happen...,
while female birds have -so to speak- a more fairplay start, since once
they lay the eggs, they can share all the joys of reproduction with
their marveled partners that have those shinning eggs to care. However,
in some mammal species this trend has been reverted due, mainly, to
practical considerations. Generally speaking we can find the best
parents among rodents, canids and only some apes.
Rodents:
Challenge:
very inmature and demanding offspring and a dangerous enviroment. Life
is short and dangerous for rodents, their bet is live fast and reproduce
fast. The newborns are a kind of pinky bulks unable to walk, see, and
conserve heat by their own for a few days, they will have their mummy
tied to them during this critical period of time. Solution?, daddy must
contribute as well:
Several species of rodents have been studied as models of paternal care, including
prairie voles (
Microtus ochrogaster),
Campbell's dwarf hamster, the
Mongolian gerbil, and the
African striped mouse. The
California mouse (
Peromyscus californicus) is a
monogamous rodent that exhibits extensive and essential paternal care, and hence has been studied as a
model organism for this phenomenon.
Canids:
A
great source of good fathers. Their challenge is a combination of
inmature puppies that need to be protected for a long period of time and
the great contribution females make to hunting and defend the territory
(they are working moms). Also, it helps that in many species that live
in packs, only the alpha couple reproduces, so they have a lot of
working hands (in reality working paws and jaws) to help.
Paternal
care has never been reported as absent in any canid species, and some
form of care has been seen in 18 of the 36 species in the family. Food
provisioning, active defense of the young, and protecting young by
remaining at the den as the female forages appear to be the commonest
forms of male care. In addition males may groom, retrieve, play and rest
with young. Male canids are rarely involved in den selection or
construction. The effect on the fitness of the young of indirect forms
of male care such as provisioning the female and territory defense are
hard to assess. Quantitative studies of male provisioning in seven
species offer few generalizations. In two species (Canis aureus, C mesomelas) females provided more food to the young than males; in one species (Alopex lagopus) the pair contributed equally to feeding young, and in four species (Canis lupus, Vulpes vulpes, Chrysocyon brachyurus, and Lycaon pictus),
males provided more food than females. Much more data are required,
particularly from field studies, before patterns of variation can be
interpreted.
Certainly many mammalian males do
great effort in order of growing their youngs, be it their offspring,
their younger relatives or their group juveniles. Although they are not
majority among mammals, because males interested only in mating and
'single mothering' -so to speak- is way far more widespread.
Apes:
Primates
in general, and apes in particular, are not so enthusiast about devoted
biparenting. In fact, wikipedia seems pparticularly laconic when
mentioning paternal care in apes: "Paternal care is rare in non-human
primates". (
Paternal care ). I think that some concepts can be added in defense of those primates, I will do it later.
Not
the most commonly known apes, gibbons, particularly siamangs, are the
males that take the greatest fathering challenges, apart from humans.
A
group of siamang normally consists of an adult dominant male, an adult
dominant female, with offspring, infants and sometimes a subadult. The
subadult usually leaves the group after attaining the age of six to
eight years; subadult females tend to leave the group earlier than
subadult males. Siamang gestation period is in between 6.2 and 7.9
months; after the infant is born, the mother takes care of the infant
for the first year of its life.
Siamang males
tend to offer more paternal care than do other members of the family
Hylobatidae, taking up a major role in carrying an infant after it is
about eight months old.
The infant typically
returns to its mother to sleep and nurse. The infant begins to travel
independently from its parents by its third year of life.
(Excerpted from Arkive. A great site to learn about animals, and not, this is not spam).
Primates in general
Well, I will say some words in defense of how many primates practice parenting:
Although monogamy is generally rare among mammals, a number of primate
species are monogamous. Extensive paternal care is a related issue but
is one that is not necessarily associated with monogamy or with paternal
certainty. For example, despite paternal certainty, primate mothers in
monogamous species with body weights over 2 kg still remain the primary
infant caretakers, while males in the communally breeding tamarins carry
infants more frequently than mothers do, even in the absence of
paternal certainty. Several different tactics are used by small-bodied
primates to cope with the energetic burden of raising proportionately
large infants in an arboreal environment: (1) infant carrying by
subadult and/or related nulliparous females (Saimiri, Lemur monogoz); (2) infant carrying by fathers and offspring (Aotus, Callicebus, Saguinus, Cebuella, Leontopithecus); (3) “parking” infants while family members forage (Tarsius, Galago, Microcebus, Cheirogaleus, Varecia); or (4) some combination of the above (Callithrix, Hapalemur, Loris).
Lactation length and infant growth patterns appear to influence which
of these tactics is employed by a given species. Moreover, although most
small-bodied, mated, monogamous female primates spend no more than 9
months annually in gestation and lactation,Aotus andCallicebus
mated females are either pregnant or lactating on a year-round basis.
It is this heavy female reproductive burden that may be an important
factor in selection for extensive paternal care in these monogamous
cebids.
And
here, in the description of these tasks carried out by other members of
the group we can find a key to understand that in some species there is
are some ways of sharing with the males the burdens of juvenile
raising, like babysitting, or even teaching. Yes, teaching:
Susana Molina's answer to Which wild animals, if any, teach their young in communities / packs / classes or other groups?
