It's pragmatic; the mother can make more babies if she gets away. She doesn't have to gloat so hard about it, though.
this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2025
1081 points (99.0% liked)
Science Memes
13800 readers
2538 users here now
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
- Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
- No spam.
- Infographics welcome, get schooled.
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Research Committee
Other Mander Communities
Science and Research
Biology and Life Sciences
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- !reptiles and [email protected]
Physical Sciences
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Humanities and Social Sciences
Practical and Applied Sciences
- !exercise-and [email protected]
- [email protected]
- !self [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Memes
Miscellaneous
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
That's one John Oliver looking motherquokka
@NaturalHabitatShorts on youtube has a bit about this.
Their whole channel is just animated comedy shorts about weird things animals do and the voice acting is great.
This is one of my favorite channels. Thanks for spreading awareness.
She gets an extra d12 damage with improvised weapons what do you expect
Kangaroos do the same. To be fair, evolutionarily it makes sense. (They only do it when they have literally no escape, and the choice is either both of them dying or the kid dying, soo…)
I bet in pre-history it happened more often than not in humans, and within recorded history has likely happened more times than anyone would admit.
eeeh our whole evolutionary niche is to be so social that we'll form bonds with a literal rock, i can't see the vast vast vast majority of mentally healthy humans managing to do it, more likely they'd try to gently throw the child away from the danger and sacrifice themselves.
Yeah. We evolved to survive as a group. Not as individuals.
Kangaroos while they do sometimes form groups, are far far less social, and kids of dead parents aren’t adopted like what would happen in a human group.
Some of the skeletons that we've found from... basically the last ice age, some even further back, show humans (or proto humans) that had had badly fractured bones... but they healed up (not well by modern standards, but nonetheless), and then those bones grew, and the individual died at a much greater age than when the serious fracture occured.
... And these people are buried in graves, with grave goods, not just thrown out or left behind in the wild.
Strong evidence of early human groups actually giving enough of a shit about their members to take care of the wounded, helps to be able to date early societal formation.
https://kimwerkmeister.substack.com/p/the-first-sign-of-civilization-how
Empathy and responsibility to care for others are actually the literal foundation of human society and civilization, contra to Musk and all the fascists and Christian Nationalists recently claiming 'empathy is a sin'.
Kangaroos form two sorts of groups
- Like most herbivores, they have one male and many females in a mob (kangaroo equivalent to a herd)
- Males outside that mob form loose groups for defence and within that they fight to establish dominance and the top roo may challenge the male lead of a mob to take it over
I don't think that would be the general case with humans under these kinds of circumstances. For most of history, women had many more children on average than we see in most of the world today. It was expected that many wouldn't live past three years old in much of known, recorded history. I can only imagine in circumstances even more primitive than what we know of, something like this wouldn't be as unthinkable as you're describing.
Plenty of anecdotal stories of infant brothers and sisters not making it through hiding during the holocaust because of muffling their cries.
I don’t care enough to ruin my day by validating a of them though.
It's true. There are various witnesses of the Shoa who absolutely did testify this happened. I actually spoke to one of them in school - during highschool two survivors of the holocaust did come to my (German) highschool and talked about what they went through, extremely nice people with extremely horrible stories.
One of them explained how they hid in an abandoned building and how the mother of the other family hiding with them choked their 8 week old baby when there was a official patrol nearby and they had to stay quiet. Didn't help, they got caught shortly after and as far as we were told none of the other family made it.
The worst thing? It's one of the "less gruesome" stories the whole Holocaust has...
Okay, but I don't think this was intentional suffocation of the kids. This seems much more as an attempt to get everyone to survive
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
Oh absolutely. We used to not give kids names until they were 3 years or so old. To not get attached.
You do not have to outrun an angry bear to survive a bear attack.
You only have to outrun your least agile camping buddy.
This motherquokka...
You motherquokka, I wanted to comment that!
If you are alive, you can make more babies. /s
Damn, nature is really cruel.
Meanwhile there are animals that so rarely can find a mate that when they do they mate with the first mate they can find and then just fucking die.
Why did you have to call me out like that? /s
load more comments
(5 replies)
This just happened to me today. A chipmunk was startled by me as I opened a door, and bolted... Her tiny week old baby was left sprawling near my feet.
I used a hand warmer and some microfiber cloths to keep it warm, then thankfully the mother came back for it... But like... Wtf, Mom?
The baby can't survive without its mom. But the mom can make new babies.
TIL how to catch a Pikachu.
Reminds me of a science fiction story.
Intelligent reptiles give birth to hundreds of eggs at a time. They eat most of the young live. The Queen of the planet offers the visiting Terrans a big bowlful of wriggling babies at a banquet.
Hey man, fuck them kids. As Mr. Krabs once said, ‘what have children ever done for me?’
load more comments
(1 replies)
I don't get what the fuss is about, I would do it too. And you can always make more later. /s
you can always make more later
It's true, I just threw the equivalent population of a small country in the bin. Can't say I'm not pleased with myself rn. 😌
Why? Let me tell ou something (compassionists hate this simple trick). As a relativist egoist it's so much easier. Do what you want to do, morality is a spook anyway. Want to bin a baby? Go for it! Want to introduce new DNA sequences in fertile humans? Do what you feel like doing. As long as you can exploit the consequences for your own gain. Life is just so much easier this way. /s
I just want to poop cubes like a wombat. How close to that is science? How about mad science?
That's my mom at a '70s measles party.
Quokkas are so adorably happy looking! 😃 I've never heard of anyone disliking them.
Improvise, adapt, overcome
, yeet.
That's why Bambi was about a deer not a quokka
And not as a survival strategy when threatened. For fun, and then they laugh (see attached pictures).
Obviously /s, they're adorable.
...after the predator instantly becomes enamored with the adorable baby quokka, and calls her own kids over to play.
That's one bad mother quokka
view more: next ›