Transcripts

Susan McCarthy:
And while there's lots of stuff they do, do by instinct there's a tremendous amount that they have to learn.

Susan McCarthy, author of the book, Becoming A Tiger How Baby Animals Have To Learn To Live In The Wild…

Baby animals have to learn some incredibly basic stuff like; what water looks like. They have to learn what their own species is and it's pretty funny when a baby animal gets that wrong. Like a tiger who was raised by a dog who apparently thought that she was a dog and wouldn't mate with any tigers because she was holding out for a dog.

And a lot of what they learn is taught by Mom and Dad…

The mother tiger, the mother lion or in many cases the father will take the young with them on the hunt, even though they're an incredible handicap. They're always making noise at the wrong time and scaring the antelopes away. But it's the way, you have to take them along so they can learn.

Susan says birds instinctively know how to fly.

But, they don't' know how to land; they don't know what to land on. So, they have to learn for example to land into the wind. Because if they land with the wind behind them the wind will push them over and they'll fall on their face.

An octopus has to learn a lot but it has to do it on it's own.

The octopus mother protects them while they're in the egg but she dies while she's rooting the eggs. And so when the baby octopus's come out, hatch out of their little eggs there's nobody to tell them what to do and nobody to protect them.

At somethingyoushouldknow.net I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.