Co-operative breeder
Co-operative breeders recruit last year's grown up offspring or other adult helpers to help raise the latest brood or litter. The minders may look after the young in creches, or individually. Examples include bee-eaters, wolves and of course, humans. If grandma or a child minder helps look after the kids, then that's cooperative breeding!
Watch video clips from past programmes (3 clips)
In order to see this content you need to have an up-to-date version of Flash installed and Javascript turned on.
Elephant emotions
Gharial guardian
Land of the Tiger
Gharials are devoted mothers, before and after their babies hatch.
Capybara young
Andes to Amazon
Only 1 in 20 baby capybaras survives where threats include expert underwater predators, anacondas.
Featured in the following TV programmes
-
Coming soon
Natural World: 2009-2010, Bringing Up Baby
Natural World investigates the vital bond between animal mothers and their babies.
Wed 9, 01:20 on BBC Two
-
Catch Up
Natural World: 2009-2010, Bringing Up Baby
Natural World investigates the vital bond between animal mothers and their babies.
-
Archived
Andes to Amazon: LOST WORLDS
3rd of a 6 part series exploring the wildlife & wild places of South America. Looks at the wildlife of the continent's vast grasslands.
Pied kingfisher 
White-fronted bee-eater 
African wild dog 
Ethiopian wolf 
Giant river otter 
Grey wolf 
Lion 
Meerkat 
Red fox 
Chimpanzee 
François' langur 
Capybara About
Cooperative breeding is a social system in which individuals help care for young that are not their own, at the expense of their own reproduction . This distinguishes it from alloparenting, which is simply the act of caring for another conspecfic's offspring. Cooperative breeding is also generally associated with reduced dispersal from the natal nest or range .
The non-parental care givers (alloparents) may be other potentially reproducing adults, as in the case of lionesses that litter at the same time nursing and caring for their cubs communally; reproductively mature but non-reproducing adults, as in subordinate wolves helping to feed and protect the pups of the alpha female; sub-fertile or infertile adults, such as the worker castes in social insect species; post-reproductive adults, as in human grandmothers caring for their grandchildren; or sub-adults, as in young Florida scrub-jays that stay with their parents a year or two as helpers at the nest before leaving to mate. Bi-parental care, in which a male forgoes pursuit of additional mating opportunities to serve as an allomother and help care for youngsters that are likely his offspring, shares many characteristics with cooperative breeding and could be considered a subset of it.
This entry is from Wikipedia, the user-contributed encyclopedia. If you find the content in the 'About' section factually incorrect, defamatory or highly offensive you can edit this article at Wikipedia. For more information on our use of Wikipedia please read our FAQ.
Other Reproduction Adaptations
Elsewhere on the web
- Cooperative breeding (wikipedia.org)
Site links
BBC links
© MMIX
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.