The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-01-06
F|SH AS EXAMPLE 10 HUMAN FATHERS Heroic Efforts in Care of
 His Children FROGS ARE PECULIAR Mothers Are Sometimes Cannibalistic and Fathers Are Left to
 Take Care of the
 Offspring
FROGS ARE PECULIAR
rrom reber Land und Meer.

l From Ueber Land Und Nicer.
 1 Even a fish may put a human father l to shame in his care for his children, 1t appears from an article by the German
 naturalist, Dr. Wilhelm Berndt. He be- | gins with the observation that the marked variation in this sense, even in human
 society, makes it one of the greatest
 problems in the domain of social ethics. l While the affection and devotion of the l human mother for her offspring can be l counted almost unfailingly, the tie be- l tween father and child is different mat | ter and only too often the strong arm | of the law is required to. regulate with | some degree of decency and humanity l 'those relations which are, with bitter l irony termed natural :" While the au- 1 thor believes the study of animal in- l stBct in all the activities connected with | the performance of the so called ''paren- l tal duties" to be of the utmost interest | to biologists and others, he warns against the danger of considering the matter from an "anthropodoxical' attitude, i. e., of transferring to the animal world con- captions founded on human relations. As
 he says, i've remain aware that among
 animals we deal merely with parallels to human conditions and activities, since one factor of the latter is always lacking, namely, the control of operations by logi- cal reasoning powers
 Dr. Berndt finds that there is among
 mammals in general a powerful ma ternal instinct but that. on the other hand, they are apt to be bad fathers "a circumstance which sheds some light on the sorrowful conditions previously l referred to as existing in the human social organism" Thus in the animals
 most closely related to us, the apes,
 mother love is so highly developed as | to be proverbia while the male, with | the exception of the man apes, exhibits | no intimate interest in any individual | of his numerous progeny, since the marital relation Is that of sexual | tyranny" or polygamy The same con ditioh exists among the various hoofed animals living in herds Further:
 Among birds we find the greatest variety of conditions from that of the faithful monogamist father, sacrificin g himself for his children (as in the great birds of prey) to the sultanate in which the conspicuousiy garbed female must conduct her young through all the dan gers of adolescence, while the gorgeous father is concerned only with the courting play and the mating sone (grouse, blackcock, etc.), Reptiles are uninteresting, since they scarce know
 the meaning of parental cares.
 Remarkably enough, we find first in the lowest vertebrates, amphibians and fishes. marital relationship and conditions whose compelling note of tragi-comedy
 finds scarcely any parallel in the realm of living things-not even in the gay con
 fusion of the ethical moral tendencies oi the most utra-modern Bohemia.
 Among the toads there are fathers | who apparently swallow their young, l. e 1 the spawn; but the paternal gullet is the babies cradle, in which they merriy de velop (Rhinoderma darwin; in the case | of others (Pipa Americana), the young l pass their tenderest youth in honeycomt | like cavities on their mothers back, in which the spawn is supposed to be placed | by tue father. Tn others still (Alytes oo- stetrcans, the well known obstetrical toad
 or nurse frog) the father acts as midwife; | he twines the ehain of eggs about his hind l legs and buries himself alive for nearly ! two weeks, until they are ready to hatch Even more remarkable, because so ex- | tremeiy variable are instincts of fishes
 in matters of proereation and care oi 1 progeny. A great number, to be sure. | especially of the well known European fishes, are utterly indifferent parents, l though we must except the droll sticale- back, with it's nest building and its sell
 sacrificing fatherly affection. The tropic and subtropic fishes, however, display the most bizarre instincts.
 .sThere are fish mothers dhe so called mouth breeders, Paratilapia and others) which hold their eggs in the mouth till the young are pretty well developed. IL l is a pretty sight when the growing little | ones hasten to take shelter in the moth CTS mouth. It is charming, too, to see i an anxious fish father leading his call dien around Ike a hen with her chickens, 1 Among certain of our carps tthe
 toothed carp. in which the female Is