Happy Father's Day!
- Kaitlyn Scheffler
- 20 hours ago
- 3 min read
We hope you all had an amazing Father’s Day last week and we wanted to take some time to appreciate all the awesome dads in the world!
Seahorse Dads: Seahorse fathers may be a top contender for best dads in the world, at least until they’re born. For seahorses, males are the ones who get pregnant. The females and males will court one another, often doing a swirling dance through the water and then the female deposits her eggs in the male's pouch with a tube-like ovipositor and swims away! The male then internally fertilizes the eggs, and his belly pouch becomes bigger and bigger with the passing day, until he goes into labor with strong muscular contractions, ejecting up to 2,000 babies at a time into the water column. Baby seahorses don’t stick around with dad though, they drift into the grasses and rocks of the bottom of the ocean where they hang out until big enough to find their own mates.
Red Fox Dads: These beautiful animals who are native to Georgia are some of the best dads in the animal kingdom. When they mate, they mate for life and care not only for their babies but for their partners as well. Red fox dads stay with the female as she gives birth to up to 10-12 kits in the den he most likely helped dig in early spring. The female fox can’t leave the den because she needs to feed all the babies, so it’s Dad's job to bring her food every few hours throughout the day! Once the babies have matured enough to venture out of the den, the male red fox starts the hard work of teaching them how to hunt by burying food around the den for them to find. He also will play with them, bouncing and pouncing around with the little ones while mom gets some much-needed rest! These play sessions secretly teach the babies important hunting and hiding skills to keep them safe from predators and allow them to learn to hunt successfully on their own. After 12 weeks or so the babies will join the parents on hunting trips before venturing out on their own and finally leaving their family units in the fall.
Cassowary Dads: Cassowary dads make our hearts melt. While Cassowaries are known for being nearly 6 feet tall with a 4-inch talon on a foot with a kick powerful enough to break bones, they are loving doting dads! Not only does the male cassowary build a beautiful nest on the ground to attract a female, but once she lays the lime green eggs the female leaves, and the super-dad cassowary steps in to sit on the eggs alone for up to 50 days until the eggs hatch! The females can lay up to eight eggs and the father doesn’t just sit on the eggs, but he also rolls them to make sure they are getting warmed on both sides up to four times a day for each egg. This loving father doesn’t stop there, once the eggs are hatched he will keep his babies with him, teaching them how to be good cassowaries for up to 18 months!
Strawberry Dart Frog Dads: Strawberry poison dart frogs are native to the tropical rain forests of Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. They have red bodies and blue or brown legs and are incredibly devoted dads. They start by protecting the 3-5 fertilized eggs that were laid by the female close to the ground in a damp area. The male then protects them for the 10 days it takes for them to hatch and urinates on them to keep them moist (kinda gross but hey it works). Once the tadpoles hatch, the father then carries the babies one by one on his back to a small pool of water nearby to grow. If the small pools start to dry up before the babies are grown, the father will repeat this process again and again to keep them safe. Sometimes, if a pool of water is too small, he may only move one or two of the tadpoles, so he has to keep track of multiple locations to keep them all safe! The female will lay more eggs in the small pools for the tadpoles to eat while they grow and it takes the tadpoles about two months to mature into adult frogs!
To all the dads out there we hope you know that you aren’t alone in this big wild world! For everyone else, if you’re still looking for a great Father’s Day Present a membership to Oatland Island Wildlife Center is always a great option! See you on the trails!
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