Who raises the young in an animal family, and who helps? Some scientists have followed the same families for decades to find out. As of November 2026, the Gombe chimpanzee study, which Jane Goodall started in 1960, is described as the longest-running study of wild chimpanzees, and researchers with the Kalahari Meerkat Project have followed one meerkat group for around thirty years. At Gombe, Tanzanian field assistants record extremely detailed observations on paper, and the same methods continue today. Since 1972, researchers in Amboseli, Kenya, have followed the lives of individually known wild elephants, and the project's partners describe its population as the best-known elephant population on Earth, because each elephant is recognized individually. The Archbold Biological Station study of Florida scrub-jays keeps monthly counts of groups, group makeup, parentage and family trees for over 6000 individuals, as of November 2026.
Great apes raise their young in different ways. Young orangutans may stay with their mothers to nurse for up to seven years, the longest childhood of the great apes. A gorilla mother is the one who carries and cares for her baby. Infants can ride on her back at 3 months. Male bonobos stay in the group they were born in for life, with a close bond to their mothers. Older female bonobos gain social status as their sons rise in dominance. If a young chimpanzee's mother dies, older siblings will often take over the care of a younger, weaned sibling. Researchers in Taï forest, Ivory Coast, reported 18 cases of orphaned chimpanzees being adopted by group members. Half were adopted by males, and only one of those proved to be the father.
Elephant calves stay close to their mothers, and other elephants in the herd help look after them. The leader of an African elephant herd is the matriarch, usually the oldest and most experienced female. When an elephant gives birth, she moves away from the herd; when they return, all herd members inspect the new calf thoroughly. Elephant calves are weaned slowly. They may still drink their mother's milk at up to three years old. A 2016 study found that Asian elephant families are less cohesive than African ones and seem to lack a clear matriarch, while in the same study African savanna elephants showed clear dominance patterns with a clear matriarch; female Asian elephants stay in the family unit for their whole lives, while males leave when they mature. Young male elephants usually leave the family herd when they are teenagers.
Lions give one picture of a family that shares the work of raising young. Lion prides are described as fission-fusion societies: members come and go and are rarely all together at once. A female lion usually stays in the pride where she was born, while young male lions eventually leave the pride they were born in. In lion prides, related females tend to have cubs at about the same time and nurse each other's cubs, and cub deaths are lowest when they do. Lion cubs can nurse from any lioness in the pride, not only their own mother. Cubs born in a lion pride are twice as likely to survive as cubs born to a lioness on her own, and lion cubs are often raised in crèches, where the whole pride helps raise several litters.
Wolves give another picture of a family that works together. In Yellowstone, wolf packs are most commonly a breeding pair and their offspring from several years. Older wolf siblings also take part in pup care and feeding, and kin selection is probably the best explanation. The positive influence of helpers was strongest for small packs; Yellowstone wolf pups are generally weaned at 5 to 9 weeks old and then fed by various pack members through meat regurgitation. Pack members bring food to the wolf mother and her small pups, so she does not have to leave the den. A wolf pack's mother and father teach the rest of the pack how to hunt, survive and mark territory; most young wolves leave their birth pack when they are between 1 and 3 years old, but some stay.
In a meerkat group, one dominant female monopolises reproduction, and the other group members help raise her pups. When a dominant female meerkat dies, the oldest subordinate female, normally one of her daughters, takes her place; meerkat helpers babysit pups for a day at a time and bring them food until the pups are three months old; they take turns, because a babysitter cannot eat while on duty and goes a whole day without food. Young Florida scrub-jays typically stay in the territory where they were born for at least a year, living as a family group with their parents. Florida scrub-jays are one of the few animal groups where scientists have found a clear benefit to the breeding parents from having helpers. A review of cooperative breeding in birds says kin selection has undoubtedly played a central role in how this behavior evolved.
The most common route to cooperative breeding is delayed dispersal, in which young stay with their parents instead of leaving. One idea for why young birds stay and help is habitat saturation: the better territories are already filled by established breeders; young beavers stay with their parents for up to 2 years, helping with infant care, food collection and dam building. In an African wild dog pack, once pups leave the den they become the responsibility of the whole pack, and pups nurse from other females as well as their mother. In African wild dogs, females usually leave their birth pack at 2 1/2 years or older, while about half of young males stay with their father's pack. Helpers in cooperatively breeding birds are typically related to the breeding pair, and cooperative breeding is a common strategy in dry regions of Africa and Australia.
Vampire bats share blood meals with relatives and non-relatives alike; a study of vampire bats recorded food sharing from 2010 to 2014 and also made individual bats fast for 24 hours to see who would feed them. In the study, vampire bats that were more generous were fed more when they failed to find food. A vampire bat that misses two nightly meals in a row will starve, which is why sharing is like an insurance policy. Dolphin calves develop signature whistles when only about a month old, which helps them stay in contact with their mothers. A male dolphin calf's signature whistle tends to resemble its mother's more than a female calf's does. Dolphins help sick, hurt or young group members by taking turns pushing them to the surface to breathe.
Orca mothers teach their calves to hunt, and orca pods pass hunting methods and dialects down the generations. Orcas teach younger pod members through apprenticeship, and skills in hunting and parenting are among the skills taught; scientists studying resident killer whales found that post-menopausal grandmothers improve the chances of survival for their grand-calves; the orca grandmother study suggests that grandmothers who are still breeding cannot give the same support as grandmothers who no longer breed. Scientists think grandmother orcas may have evolved to live past their breeding years to help raise their grandcalves. An orca pod's dialect has been shown to stay the same in a pod for up to six generations. An orca calf may nurse for up to two years, and mothers give birth to one baby at a time.
Not every animal lives in a group, and the groups that do exist can look very different from one another. Brown bears are generally solitary: the only social bonds they form are between mothers and their young. Tigers usually live alone, except for a mother with her cubs, and a female tiger gives birth every 3 to 4 years, depending on how long her earlier cubs depended on her. A honeybee colony has one reproductive female, the queen, and her offspring; the workers that care for the young are the queen's sterile daughters. Naked mole-rats are eusocial: a colony has a queen, a few breeding males and non-breeding workers who care for the young and protect the colony. In a naked mole-rat colony, the workers help raise the queen's pups, who are their brothers and sisters.
Words to know
- dispersal: moving away
- eusocial: fully cooperative
- subordinate: lower-ranking
- saturation: being full
- apprenticeship: learning from experts
