04-24-2011, 08:26 PM
P.S. ... maternal behavior is really something, super-instinctual and hard-wired. In my hammies, I routinely see things like moms carrying their pups back to the nest with their mouths (like a dog with a bone!), and in one extreme case, I've even gotten a mom to adopt pups that aren't hers. (That's really unusual for a species that identifies their young/littermates by virtue of odor!) Reason I say hard-wired is that it's seemingly programmed behavior, as moms-to-be never get a chance to observe other females' behavior... somehow they just instinctually know what to do.