Animal Mothers and Babies

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A young elephant nuzzles its mother during a visit to the drought-depleted Zambezi riverbed.

(Photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Down the Zambezi," October 1997, National Geographic magazine)

"For a [female] cheetah the real danger is not losing a kill but losing her cubs. Ninety-five percent of cheetah cubs die before reaching independence. Hyenas kill them out of hunger, lions apparently out of bad habit. ... Female cheetahs deal with the threat by constantly moving, preferably before their rivals even know they're around. They coexist as phantom species, slipping into temporary vacancies between prides of lions and packs of hyenas."

�Text adapted from "Cheetahs: Ghosts of the Grasslands," December 1999, National Geographic magazine

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Cheetahs: Ghosts of the Grasslands," December 1999, National Geographic magazine)

"A fistful of mother's skin and hair keeps one-year-old Bekti aloft as she rides on Beth, who is hurtling herself through the forest. It will likely be almost seven years before Bekti will have a younger sibling, one of the intriguing aspects of orangutans that has lured me [anthropologist Cheryl Knot] to Borneo to study their reproductive cycles and social patterns."

�From "Orangutans in the Wild," August 1998, National Geographic magazine

"Jaws that can crush a backbone become a tender conveyance as Sita totes a cub to a new den, a constant chore to safeguard her young from leopards, wild dogs, and other tigers. Hiding cubs well is critical, since she may be away hunting for 24 hours or more. Sita is living proof that this endangered species can flourish if only given enough room and enough prey."

�From "Making Room for Wild Tigers," December 1997, National Geographic magazine

A Mexican gray wolf snuggles with two pups at the Sedgwick County Zoo. At one time, gray wolves were among the most widely distributed mammals on Earth. However, by the early 1900s, unchecked trapping, poisoning, and hunting of these highly intelligent predators drove the species to the brink of extinction.

(Text adapted from and photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Return of the Gray Wolf," May 1998, National Geographic magazine)

A polar bear cub lets his mother know he's ready to nurse. Polar bears nurse their cubs for two and a half years with milk containing 35 percent fat�a security blanket for the upcoming Arctic winter.

(Text adapted from and photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Polar Bears: Stalkers of the High Arctic," January 1998, National Geographic magazine)

"Once they're three months old, geladas ride their mothers jockey-style. Females have just four or five babies in a lifetime but invest a lot of time and energy taking care of them�it's a 'quality, not quantity' strategy, says biologist Chadden Hunter, who has spent parts of the past six years with the animals in Ethiopia."

�From "Final Edit," November 2002, National Geographic magazine

"Back from a kill, Bell, the breeding female of her pack, is greeted by 11 pups, anxious to nurse and beg a meal of regurgitated meat. African wild dogs dote on their young; this eight-week-old brood was left in the care of a pack baby-sitter�an older brother or sister�while mother hunted."

�From "Africa's Wild Dogs," May 1999, National Geographic magazine

A mother and her calf hippopotamus cool off in the "Land of the Surfing Hippos." Loango National Park got that nickname from the resident hippopotamuses' habit of swimming in the ocean and body-surfing to and from feeding grounds.

(Text adapted from and photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Gabon's Loango National Park: In the Land of the Surfing Hippos," August 2004, National Geographic magazine)

Nestled in grasses off of the Zambezi River, a lion and her cub relax as evening sets in. Lion mothers give birth to two to four cubs at a time, on average.

(Photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Down the Zambezi," October 1997, National Geographic magazine)

In an image taken by a remotely operated 35-mm camera, a baby langur monkey clings to his mother's chest in India's Bandhavgarh National Park. Photographer Michael Nichols set up the cameras to capture tigers in action, but the active langur monkeys tripped the infrared beam thousands of times a day, using up so many rolls of film that he had to adjust the timer to operate during "tiger time" �late afternoon, when tigers prepared for their nightly hunt.

(Text adapted from and photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Sita: Life of a Wild Tigress," December 1997, National Geographic magazine)

"'Uncheckt shadows of green brown and gray,' poet John Clare wrote of the moors, land that 'never felt the rage of blundering plough.' On Exmoor, hedge banks faintly trace the far hill. Supporters hope they won't vanish over the horizon of time."

�From "Britain's Hedgerows," September 1993, National Geographic magazine

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