168 CHILDHOOD OF ANIMALS 



care to keep it sweet and clean, whilst she licks the cubs with her 

 rough tongue until they are able to look after their own toilet 

 or to lick and clean each other. 



The duties of parental care among carnivores fall chiefly on the 

 mothers, and although lions and tigers and not a few of the larger 

 cats remain in pairs, the father takes little interest in the cubs. For 

 the first few days the mother does not leave her family even to feed, 

 but afterwards she has to leave them from time to time to go out 

 hunting on her own account. Almost the first sign of independent 

 life in young carnivores is their power of wailing and screaming ; 

 they are very noisy babies, and in captivity, when cubs are expected 

 and the mother has retired to her sleeping-den, her guardians know 

 when the happy event has taken place by hearing the squealing 

 of the cubs. Polar bear cubs have loud, shrill voices and seem to 

 cry almost continuously from the moment they are born. Lion and 

 tiger cubs, leopard and jaguar cubs, have thinner and smaller voices 

 at first, but in a few weeks wail like cats. The voice of a caracal 

 cub, when it is so young that it cannot yet stand upright, can be 

 heard all over a house if the little creature has been shut up alone. 

 Hunger is certainly not the chief reason why they cry out, for they 

 are as vehement after a good meal as before it. Cold is sometimes 

 the cause of the complaint, because all young carnivores like to be 

 kept very warm, and will bask with comfort in front of a fire until 

 their fur feels hot to the touch. What they want is companionship, 

 and their loud shrieks when they are left alone guide the mother 

 to them, and she in return calls to them with a special note unlike 

 her usual purr or roar. Many carnivores, as, for instance, pumas and 

 caracals, practically never use their voices except in the breeding 

 season, and then chiefly as a call between the mother and the young. 



The carnivorous mother always carries her young about in her 

 mouth, picking them up by the loose skin on the back of the neck, 

 and so carries them back to the lair if they have wandered from it, 

 or transports them to new quarters. Although the cubs or kittens 

 climb over the mother when she is lying down, she seldom carries 

 them except in her mouth. A polar bear in the London Zoological 

 Gardens, however, was noticed to carry her cub, not in her mouth, but 

 tucked under her arm. It is generally supposed that the female polar 

 bear makes a burrow in the snow in late autumn, and that the 

 one or two cubs are born inside this and remain there throughout 

 the winter while the mother hibernates. The cubs are excessively 

 small compared with the size of the mother and grow very slowly 



