When mothering is the cat’s meow

RONAN and Emma Lally have caused quite a stir.

At their home, in Clara Co Offaly, they put duck eggs under a broody hen. Four chicks hatched, three of which survived.

When the youngsters disappeared, suspicion fell on the family cat. Then, the ducklings were discovered, huddled with newborn kittens, under her; she had carried them, one by one, to her bed. With newspaper reports and television exposure, the story ‘went global’ and the head-scratching began. Primates occasionally behave altruistically; we probably inherited sympathetic tendencies, and a primitive sense of fair-play, from pre-human ancestors.

Such virtues, however, are alien to solitary carnivores, such as cats, although claims for them are made from time to time. At a national park in Uganda last year, a lioness killed and devoured an antelope. Then the victim’s terrified baby emerged from the long grass. A cameraman recording the scene feared the worst but the lioness spared the baby and seemed to adopt it as a surrogate cub.

Were the broody Offaly cat and the Ugandan lioness temporarily imbued with the milk of human kindness or is there a more sinister explanation? Cats will play with victims before killing them; a mother trains her kittens by doing so.

Bringing live ducklings to the den could stem from such behaviour; then the brooding instinct might take over. Lionesses also bring home live prey. The Ugandan female, having eaten her fill, would not need to kill again. Was taking the calf home and sparing it, just an instance of food storage?

The behaviour of the ducks is more easily explained. Pliny the Elder, killed by noxious gases while investigating the eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD, wrote in his Naturalis Historia that young geese become fixated on their owners. Farmers have always known that ducklings and goslings will follow them around and, in the 16th century Thomas More mentioned the phenomenon.

Three hundred years later, the behaviour was scientifically examined for the first time when Douglas Spalding put bags over the heads of newly hatched ducklings. The Austrian zoologist Konrad Lorenz carried out the definitive experiments. He would share the 1973 Nobel Prize for ‘discoveries in individual and social patterns’.

On hatching, chicks respond to the first large object in their vicinity. This is almost invariably their mother. The ‘window of opportunity’ for a strange form of learning opens just as a baby starts moving about. In ducks, this occurs soon after hatching and continues for 20 hours or so, after which the process is complete.

In some species, the period is longer. Captive zebra finches, for example, are susceptible for about 20 days. Lorenz showed the ‘imprinted’ object may not resemble the mother and need not even be alive; babies are not born with an innate idea of their parent. Imprinting is impossible to eradicate and can’t be substantially changed.

The Offaly ducklings becoming ‘imprinted’ on the cat, accepting her as their surrogate mother, would explain their huddling close to her. The experience, however, may lead to difficulties later in life. Normal imprinting ensures that youngsters select their own species on reaching breeding age; they seek mating partners resembling their parents.

If imprinted on a cat, a duck may ‘come on’ to cats. Pussies won’t take kindly to such propositioning and romantic approaches may end in tears.

Nor is imprinting found only in birds. The giant panda Chi Chi was taken to Moscow Zoo in 1966 to mate with An An the resident male. Chi-chi, whose name, apparently, means ‘naughty girl’ in Chinese, spurned the proposed suitor; she fancied one of the Russian keepers instead. Henry VIII couldn’t rise to Anne of Cleves. Human infants smile and chuckle when approached by all and sundry but, when a little older, they ‘make strange’ unless they know the person.

Movement and noise enhance the imprinting process in birds; human babies enjoy noisy rattles and respond to music. The Westermarck Effect, a mechanism discouraging incest, is a form of reverse imprinting, which ensures children raised together won’t be sexually attracted to each other later in life.