Born helpless or up in an hour
Some babies are born helpless. A PUPPY or KITTEN arrives with its eyes and ears sealed shut and cannot walk properly for weeks, safe in a den while its mother hunts. Scientists call these babies altricial. Others are ready to go almost at once. A FOAL or a CALF usually stands within an hour of birth and can run with the herd soon after — important for grazing animals whose predators are always nearby. An elephant mother is pregnant for about twenty-two months, the longest of any land mammal, and her calf can walk within hours.
Birds split the same way. A songbird CHICK hatches naked and blind and is fed in the nest for weeks. A DUCKLING or GOSLING hatches covered in down and can walk, swim and feed itself within a day.
Goslings that followed a scientist
Newly hatched geese and ducks follow the first moving thing they see, usually their mother, and remember it — a process called imprinting. In the 1930s the Austrian scientist Konrad Lorenz hatched goslings himself, and they followed him everywhere, swimming behind him in a line. A CYGNET, a baby swan, often rides on its parent's back.
Chicks start talking before they hatch. In the last day or two inside the egg, a chick peeps, and a hen answers with soft clucks, so by the time it breaks out it already knows her voice. An OWLET usually leaves the nest before it can fly properly, clambering along branches in a stage called branching.
Why a baby hare should be left alone
A LEVERET, a baby hare, is born with fur and open eyes, and its mother leaves it alone in a shallow dip in a field for almost the whole day, coming back just once or twice after dark to feed it. People who find one often think it has been abandoned and pick it up, but it has not. The same goes for a FAWN, a young deer, which lies hidden in long grass with spotted camouflage and very little scent while its mother feeds nearby.
Baby birds found on the ground in spring are usually fledglings that have left the nest on purpose and are still being fed by their parents. Unless a baby animal is clearly injured or in danger, the best help is usually to leave it where it is and keep pets away.
A name for every baby
A young goat is a KID, a young fox is a KIT, and a young horse is a FOAL: a COLT if male and a FILLY if female. A JOEY is a baby kangaroo, a BUNNY a young rabbit, and an EAGLET a young eagle. A TADPOLE is a baby frog, and changes shape completely before it looks anything like its parents — our life cycles page shows how.
The rest of the grid holds the CUB of a lion, bear or fox, the LAMB, the CHICK, and the PIGLET — each piglet in a litter claims its own teat within a day or two of birth and sticks to it, which saves fighting at every meal.