Do Birds And Animals Bond As Families?

Maneka Sanjay gandhi, Member of Parliament (Lok Shabha)

When we were young, we spent two months every year with my mother’s parents on a huge farm in a village near Bhopal. We slept in mosquito netted beds in the garden, we shelled peas, roasted green channas, and played pittoo and all sorts of indoor games with shells and seeds. We were fed relentlessly. Did I ever sit down and ask my grandmother things about herself? Not that I can remember. I called her Dujama and learnt her name twenty years later! I was far too much in awe of my grandfather to even talk to him.

My granddaughter is shy. Once she loosens up she tells me all about her world. But she, like I did with my grandmother, expressed no interest in who I am or what I am interested in. I am her Dadi and that is enough for her. Will my granddaughter remember me when I am gone? She is small now but I shall try to pass on to her as much as I know about my family and the world around us and perhaps how to survive it.

Are we the only grandparents? Do any animals know their grandparents the way humans do? For most species the answer is ‘no’. Insects spread out immediately and the ones that are in community housing – like ants and bees - are brought up communally in nurseries by feeders and caretakers. In 2010, researchers reported, in ‘Current Biology’ that in gall-forming aphid colonies, older females defend their relatives after they have ceased to reproduce.

Most birds do not recognise their family members after their first year. There are exceptions to this, especially among social birds such as cranes, crows, and jays. A 2007 study in the journal ‘Evolution’, found that older female Seychelles warblers help their offspring raise chicks. Canada Geese also remember their parents, and may even rejoin their parents and siblings during winter and on migration. There is cooperative breeding and caring about 200 species of birds. But that does not necessarily include grandmothers.