Penguins Love Birds African Elephants

Sure parenting can be hard, but bringing your baby up in sub-zero Antarctic conditions? Now that’s a real challenge. Male penguins travel far and wide (about 3,100 miles) to find the perfect nesting site for their female loves. When the female arrives to lay her eggs, the penguin parents take it in turns to keep their egg continuously incubated (if it is left in the cold for more than five minutes it will never hatch).

Once the baby is born the hard work just keeps on coming as the parents rotate between one other to go out on fishing expeditions to ensure their new born is well feed. If the father goes missing, the mother must abandon the ship and leave the nest as it’s impossible to bring their chicks up alone. And there we were thinking being a penguin was a waddle in the park!

Love Birds
This list just wouldn’t be complete without a few Love Birds. But in addition to their name, these colourful creatures are pretty damn romantic, believing monogamy is the key to a successful relationship. Whilst the mother lays her eggs, the male is off getting food for her (he knows the way to a woman’s heart), continuing this behaviour once the chicks are born to ensure they have a constant food supply to build them up.

African Elephants
Everyone knows an elephant never forgets but did you know they are also incredibly loyal? The relationship between the elephant family is unbreakable, especially when it comes to elephant mothers and their babies. Not only do mother elephants carry their babies for 22 whole months (weighing up to 250 pounds!), they also make sure they raise their children every step of the way, protecting them to the death if needs be.

In times of danger, elephant parenting kicks into full force as a group of adult elephants stand in a circle around any vulnerable victims. And if a young elephant is taken by another herd, the whole squad round up the troops and gets together to look more threatening, heading off to get their precious little one back to where they belong.

When an elephant passes away its companions’ morn it’s death by standing silently at the body for days on end, sometimes even retuning to pay homage to the bones. And to comfort each other? They console one another with an elephant hug by putting their trucks into each other’s mouths. You guyssssss.