548 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



if the idea were not too subtle for an animal. Apart from what is 

 sometimes too generously appraised, especially in domestic animals, 

 there are scores of well-observed and carefully described cases where 

 the parent shows courage and persistence in protecting its offspring. 

 The parent is often ill at ease, if not anxious, when the young one 

 is removed; it often shows signs of grief when the young one has 

 been killed. We cannot make sense of what we observe unless we 

 credit animal parents, among birds and mammals, with some 

 degree of parental emotion. 



This is not, of course, to assert that the whole parental behaviour 

 is controlled by fine feelings of affection or devotion, for body and 

 mind work together. Often, no doubt, the caresses of the offspring 

 are sensuously pleasant to the parent, and the mother's fondlings 

 are not without a reflex reward. Moreover, there may occasionally 

 be some subtle linkage between "love of children" and "love of 

 mates", especially in cases where the male parent takes on the 

 normally maternal functions of nurture, as in the Sea-horse 

 (Hippocampus) and the Nurse-frog (Alytes). 



It is also highly probable that in some instances the parental 

 solicitude is connected with a dawning sense of possession or 

 property. The scarabee beetle objects to having its ball of camel's 

 dung stolen by a neighbour; a mother-spider objects to the removal 

 of the silken bag or cocoon in which she carries her eggs or offspring. 

 Between these two cases may we not place the jealous objections 

 which not a few birds offer to the intrusion of a neighbour on the 

 selected "territory" where the courting goes on and where the nest 

 is eventually built? 



The analysis of the parental emotion is a difficult problem for the 

 psychological expert ; what the naturalist is chiefly concerned with 

 is the reality and the value of the emotion. It forges psychical bonds 

 between parents and offspring — psychical bonds which strengthen 

 physical endeavour and may sustain the offspring-regarding efforts 

 when the simpler and more physiological appeals of the offspring 

 are no longer ix)tent. The pleasurableness of the parental emotion 

 has indirect survival-value because it makes the patience and 

 sacrifice involved in parentage more attainable. The playsomeness 

 of many young mammals is probably a useful rejuvenescent factor, 

 helping to keep the parents young. In some cases the parent mammal 

 plays year after year with successive families. Finally, the parental 

 emotions are probably in many cases indispensable in evoking the 

 individual development of finer feelings of an altruistic kind, which 

 reach their climax in kin-sympathy and social loyalty. 



On the other hand, we must avoid the extreme of over-generosity. 

 It is unnecessary to credit a mother fox with the parental pride so 

 familiar in mankind. For in all probability the devoted carnivore- 

 mother is a long way from being able to say to herself: This is my 



