Last week (10 April) Maurice wrote to his MSP John Swinney, urging the Scottish Government to give farmers more advice about protecting new-born lambs from severe weather. We thought Maurice’s words were so cogent – and so moving – that we should share them with you.

“A week ago, on 3^rd April, snow and freezing temperatures hit much of Scotland. These conditions were forecast well in advance. Even roadside information boards gave warning. In spite of this, some sheep farmers were caught unprepared and lambs died as a result.

“For many years I have been campaigning to cut the death toll on Scottish sheep farms. I have discussed the problem with politicians, government officials, and research workers. Some progress has been made, but there is still a need for improvement.

“What is needed now is a high impact initiative such as a letter and leaflet sent to every sheep farmer in Scotland. The letter would emphasise the need for preparation and the leaflet would detail measures required to safeguard the new-born lambs and the ewes.

“The Scottish Government's own Animal Health Division did a good job in putting information and advice on its website last November. However, there are always some people who need extra help. One such person appeared on the STV News of 3^rd April: an Aberdeenshire sheep farmer of 30 years' experience. In some ways he was a hero for he battled through the night to save his sheep and lambs in what he called ‘hurricane winds’ and ‘eight inches of snow’.

“In another way, he might have been rather stupid. He was like someone valiantly bailing out the boat when he should have plugged the hole before setting off. In his own words he said: "I couldn't get moved with the bike. I had to make roads in the field with the Landrover." The fact is he didn't have the right equipment, he should have had the ewes closer to hand. The 5-day weather forecast was accurate and gave him plenty of time for preparation, and of course a man of 30 years' experience will have seen more than one icy blast and snow deeper than eight inches. Sadly, this farmer would not have been the only one to get caught out.

“How do you get people to stop making terrible blunders – blunders that consign infant lambs to horrific deaths? Ideally, these people would be identified and advice given directly. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to identify these farmers and it becomes necessary to make a general approach that risks offending good farmers. The risk is worth taking though, and so is the cost. Failure costs money – it costs the tax-payer by way of compensation and it costs the farmer the true value of his stock and his reputation. It is also diminishes the reputation of Scottish farming. High animal welfare standards do not include abandoning new-born lambs to their fate on icy hillsides lashed by winds that hurt to the very marrow.

“Ice and snow are not the only dangers; I well remember the response of an NFUS official on the Grampian TV News following heavy losses of lambs during very wet weather in late April, 1998. His response was: "They just couldn't take the rain." I hope never again to hear that kind of remark disgracing Scotland's farming. Surely access and shelter are obvious – basic requirements for any animal.

“Having said what I would like, I now would like to say what I don't want. I don't want another reply from Cabinet Secretary Richard Lochhead telling me that casualties are inevitable on farms in severe weather and everything is done to minimise them. I know about casualties on farms: I have studied agriculture at post-graduate level and I have worked on farms in Scotland and overseas. In any event, it doesn't take much experience to know that there is considerable room for improvement on some farms in Scotland. It is in everyone's interest to see these improvements made.

“Please don't be one of those Scots who turn a blind eye to the suffering of the lambs. Please find the relatively small amount of money needed to jolt the worst of Scotland's farmers into action. It's a small cost, but it could be very cost effective, and it could mean an end to the disgraceful suffering inflicted on infant lambs in Scotland every year.

“In 2010, Scotland's sheep sector received £200,000 in emergency aid to help dispose of the thousands of animals that perished during the winter weather. At that time, Richard Lochhead said: "The impact on individual sheep farmers has been variable across the country and this funding will be targeted at those with the highest losses." One farmer alone lost 132 animals.

“Please do all you can.”

Oh ye! who, sunk in beds of down,

Feel not a want but what yourselves create,

Think for a moment, on his wretched fate,

Whom friends and fortune quite disown!

List'ning the doors an' winnocks rattle,

I thought me on the ourie cattle,

Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle

O' winter war,

And thro' the drift, deep-lairing, sprattle

Beneath a scar.

From A Winter Night by Robert Burns

What do you think? OneKind believes that farmers in Scotland care for their animals – but since severe winter weather comes every year, why do so many new born animals suffer and die?  How can the Scottish Government bring an end to this tragedy? 

This is the latest research looking at the psychological effects of traumatic events on our closest living relatives.

It has been known for decades that captivity can cause pathological behaviours in nonhuman primates. For example, it is widely recognised that premature separation from mothers leads to a range of adverse behavioural and social effects in chimpanzee infants. Likewise, other unnatural rearing conditions, social isolation, prolonged captivity, sensory deprivation, and use in laboratory experimentation have been reported to contribute to abnormal behaviours in nonhuman primates. Such abnormal behaviours of chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates in captivity include repetitive stereotypic behaviour and self-injury.Just last week we reported on a new study showing that mental illness is endemic in chimpanzees kept in zoos.

In this latest research, the researchers used models for assessing post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression in humans to assess 196 chimpanzees living in wild sites in Africa and 168 chimpanzees living in sanctuaries with prior histories of experimentation, orphanage, illegal seizure, or violent human conflict

The study's lead author, Dr. Hope Ferdowsian, Director of Research Policy for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. “Chimpanzees are taken from their mothers at a very early age, sometimes just after they’re born," she says. "Chimpanzees are also forced into isolation many times as a result of being used in Hepatitis and other protocols. So there are clear harms associated with the use of chimpanzees in research, and we wanted to look at exactly how chimpanzees are affected by all the harms that are inflicted upon them over the course of a lifetime.”

In collecting their data, Ferdowsian and her colleagues relied on feedback from the chimps’ caretakers, who - in many cases - had known the animals for years.

One of the subjects was Negra, who spent 30 years as a test subject in biomedical research before being transferred to a chimp sanctuary. Negra's caretakers describe her as socially isolated and withdrawn, and she assumed a depressed, hunched posture, much like you’d see in humans with depression. “She walked around with a blanket over her head, really isolating herself from the rest of the world,” says Ferdowsian.

The researchers found that significantly more chimpanzees living in the sanctuaries (58%) met the criteria for depression than chimpanzees in the wild (3%), and more of the chimpanzees in sanctuaries (44%) also met the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder than chimpanzees in the wild (0.5%).

The study concludes that the behavioral changes Negra and many other chimps exhibited after their laboratory experiences were very similar to those seen in combat veterans suffering post-rtraumatic stress disorder.

The researchers note that since nonhuman animals, including chimpanzees, are frequently used in research, there is an ethical imperative to understand the potentially adverse effects of captivity and their use in research: "Chimpanzees display behavioral clusters similar to PTSD and depression in their key diagnostic criteria, underscoring the importance of ethical considerations regarding the use of chimpanzees in experimentation and other captive settings."

Although chimpanzees are no longer used in experiments in the UK, they are also still used in experiments in some other countries. About 1,000 chimpanzees currently live in private and government-run laboratory facilities across the United States, where they are used as subjects for medical experiments. This new study focuses new attention on a proposed U.S. law, The Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act, which would phase out experiments on chimpanzees and retire the apes to sanctuaries.

OneKind is currently campaigning to maintain the UK’s welfare standards for animals used in experiments which are under threat. If you’ve not already done so please add your name in support of our campaign.

Commercial whaling has been banned for more than twenty years. But some countries – like Norway, Japan and Iceland  – continue to hunt whales Their meat is then sold commercially for human consumption. This means around 2,500 whales are still killed every year in cruel and unnecessary hunts that cause intense pain and distress.

Whales can suffer for up to an hour before they succumb to the harpoons and rifles of the hunters. All available evidence tells us there is no way to hunt and kill whales at sea without causing acute suffering.

For these reasons we believe that the International Whaling Commission has a duty to progress animal welfare and ethics in its policies and decisons. So, in recent weeks we have been informing Commissioners about a new report of the ‘Whale Welfare and Ethics Workshop’. The UK Government proposed the workshop at the last IWC meeting and it was welcomed and encouraged by many other governments.  

The Workshop brought together over 30 international experts in the fields of animal welfare, ethics, and marine mammals. The resulting conclusions and recommendations provide a highly credible foundation for the Commission to update and improve its approach to the management of animal welfare and ethics.

In a joint letter to Commissioners, we said: “The recommendations, if adopted, could enable the Commission to implement a more scientific and objective approach to decision making incorporating animal welfare concerns, as is practised in many other multilateral environmental agreements. For example the introduction of an ethics review committee, would allow the Commission to more effectively address and reach agreement over divisive issues.”

Our calls for change are based on the fact that whales are sentient creatures. In an appendix to the report, Evidence for Awareness in Whales, Roger Payne from Ocean Alliance explains the case for sentience in whales.

He concludes: “ All that I have described of the capabilities of cetaceans, from songs that change and include rhyme, self-awareness of a song as a vocal performance, tool use, social facilitation and culture, experimental tests measuring the ability to understand words and syntax in a gestural language, the presence in cetacean brains of spindle cells (otherwise known only in elephants and primates, including humans)…all of these argue forcefully that cetaceans are conscious, self-aware, and can plan, meaning that they are rational beings whose rights we, as rational beings, should respect.”

With no option for humane slaughter, OneKind and the rest of the Whalewatch coalition, which is coordinated by the World Society for the Protection of Animals, are calling for an end to all commercial whaling. Until such a time, progress must be made to view and treat whales more ethically.

Our calls will be strengthened by the growing evidence of whales’ sentience. We now know that cetaceans such as whales are self-aware, have social cultures and show some of the most complex behaviour in the animal kingdom. Yet we still have so much to learn about them - their behaviour, intelligence and social lives under the waves. By gaining more insight into the capacities of whales and their complex lives we can better understand the full impacts of the hunts on them and strengthen our calls for an end to the killing of all whales.

Researchers, who presented their work at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Conference in Glasgow this week, have shown that urban pigeons that have never been caught or handled can recognise individuals, probably by using facial characteristics.

Although pigeons have shown remarkable feats of perception when given training in the lab, this is the first research showing similar abilities in untrained feral pigeons.

In a park in Paris city centre, pigeons were fed by two researchers, of similar build and skin colour, wearing different coloured lab coats. One individual simply ignored the pigeons, allowing them to feed while the other was hostile, and chased them away. This was followed by a second session when neither chased away the pigeons.

The experiment, which was repeated several times, showed that pigeons were able to recognise the individuals and continued to avoid the researcher who had chased them away even when they no longer did so. Swapping lab coats during the experiments did not confuse the pigeons and they continued shun the researcher who had been initially hostile.

"It is very likely that the pigeons recognised the researchers by their faces, since the individuals were both female and of a similar age, build and skin colour," says Dr. Dalila Bovet a co-author of this work from the University of Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense. "Interestingly, the pigeons, without training, spontaneously used the most relevant characteristics of the individuals (probably facial traits), instead of the lab coats that covered 90% of the body."

The fact that the pigeons appeared to know that clothing colour was not a good way of telling humans apart suggests that the birds have developed abilities to discriminate between humans in particular. This specialised ability may have come about over the long period of association with humans, from early domestication to many years of living in cities.

Future work will focus on identifying whether pigeons learn that humans often change clothes and so use more stable characteristics for recognition, or if there is a genetic basis for this ability, linked to domestication or to having evolved in an urban environment.

Pigeons are often given a hard time by intollerent and uniformed people, because they have adapted so successfully to live with us in our city environments. Research such as this shows that pigeons are clearly far from stupid and can only help to improve peoples' perceptions of these fearthered friends and ultimately the way they are treated.

Over billions of years nature has evolved solutions that we have copied to create countless 'inventions' including turbine blades, velcro and infra-red goggles. This application of biological methods and systems found in nature to the study and design of engineering systems and modern technology is known as Bionics. Some fascinating examples of current research projects are being presented at this week’s Society for Experimental Biology Annual Conference in Glasgow.

Pigeons inform auto-pilot navigation technology

New research on how birds can fly so quickly and accurately through dense forests may lead to new developments in robotics and auto-pilots.

Scientists from Harvard University trained pigeons to fly through an artificial forest with a tiny camera attached to their heads, literally giving a birds-eye view. Pigeons, with more than 300 degree panoramic vision, are well suited to this task because this wrap-round vision allows them to assess obstacles on either side. They can also stabilise their vision and switch rapidly between views.

The birds have other skills that would be important for auto-piloted machines, for example they tend to choose the straightest routes and can exit forests heading in exactly the same direction as when they entered in spite of all the twist and turns they made in the forest. When using a robot or an unmanned air-craft it would be invaluable to simply provide it with the coordinates of the destination without having to give it detailed information of all the obstacles it might meet on the way.

Swifts inspire flapping Micro Air Vehicles

Engineers have developed a micro air vehicle (MAV) that mimics the flight abilities of the swift, a passerine bird renowned for its aerial acrobatics.

Camera-mounted MAVs are frequently used in reconnaissance and rescue missions to scope out a dangerous situation before humans go in. Most of these micro-planes use a fixed-wing design because gliding is more energy efficient and allows for better picture quality. Flapping wings would allow for greater maneuverability, but at the cost of a shakier image.

Researchers based their new MAV on the swift's aerodynamics, combining both flapping and gliding abilities into a single vehicle. Though their prototype is still being tested, the researchers say their initial trials have been promising.

Tree Frogs' self-cleaning feet could solve a sticky problem

Trying to re-stick a piece of tape to a surface after it's become dusty is infuriating. So how do tree frogs get around this problem? 

It turns out the arboreal amphibians, which secrete gluey mucus from pads on their feet, refresh their stickiness with every step they take.

Biologists found that the White's tree frog (Litoria caerulea) self-cleans as it climbs thanks to special channels in its feet that slime away dirt and debris. When the frog moves its limbs forward, the mucus and any accumulated gunk slip through the channels and stay behind while new sticky mucus is secreted in its place.

The researchers say these findings could one day inspire such technology as self-cleaning medical bandages and self-renewing adhesives.

Not only does nature continue to provide answers to our technological problems in 2011, it seems it also beat us to some of our previous ‘inventions’ – such as screws and nuts. Researchers have just discovered that the hips of small weevils do not consist of the usual hinges, but of joints based on a screw-and-nut system half a millimetre in size. It seems weevils have been using this construction for about 100 million years!

We still have so much to learn from the millions of animals and plants around us. It is to be hoped that the more we find out about them the more we will want to conserve and protect them.

A team of researchers in the UK and US devised a method to measure the happiness, or subjective well-being, of captive orangutans in zoos. In a follow-up study seven years later, the scientists found that happier primates were much more likely still to be alive.

The team, led by Dr Alex Weiss from the University of Edinburgh, asked the people who worked closely with each captive orangutan to participate in the study. He asked the keepers to complete a questionnaire about individual animals they knew well; assessing the orangutans' personalities and attitude. The assessment was modelled on established methods of assessing human well-being.

The keepers were asked how often the orangutans were in a good mood as opposed to a bad mood, how much they enjoyed social interactions and whether they were effective at achieving their goals. The keepers were also asked to speculate as to how happy they would be if they were the animals in question.

By working out a happiness score for each of 184 animals, the team was able to see how happiness influenced the orangutans' lives. Seven years later, when they revisited the study, they could see a clear association between happiness and longevity. The happiest orangutans lived up to 11 years longer than the least happy apes.

"[In captivity], we might be able to extend life by more closely monitoring the health of an animal that seems unhappy," explained Dr Weiss. He also thinks the work could be usefully applied to wild orangutans. "There are lots of sanctuaries that are temporary homes for animals that are rescued having been captured by traders and hunters. These happiness or well-being measures could be used to work out if an animal is ready to be reintroduced into the wild. I'd love to see this questionnaire being used more broadly."

These results could shed light on how happiness evolved, not just in orangutans but all primates, including ourselves. Dr. Weiss says "Already we have shown that certain personality traits linked to happiness share the same genetic basis in humans and chimpanzees. Studying these relationships across a wide range of species could yield fascinating insights into the evolutionary bases of happiness, depression and a host of other psychological characteristics that impact the lives of humans and, most likely, a range of other species."

This study gives an interesting insight into the effects of degrees of happiness on captive orangutans, based on the subjective assumptions of zoo keepers. However given the findings of recent research that mental illness is endemic in chimpanzees kept in zoos one must question whether the finding of this latest study is actually that the most unhappy orangutans in zoos die sooner than those who are less unhappy.

 What do you think - can animals be happy in zoos?

It is therefore not surprising that a new study has shown that keeping chimps captive in zoos causes abnormal behaviours indicative of mental health problems.

Researchers from the University of Kent’s School of Anthropology and Conservation observed 1200 hours of footage of 40 socially-housed zoo-living chimpanzees from six collections in the USA and UK. They measured the prevalence, diversity, frequency, and duration of abnormal behaviours such as self-mutilation, repetitive rocking, as well as the eating of faeces and drinking of urine.

They found that all of the chimps performed abnormal behaviour of some kind and for some individuals it may dominate much of their activity. They  concluded that abnormal behaviour is endemic in these captive chimps.

Abnormal behaviours are thought to be caused by the restricted and unnatural zoo enclosures compared to the chimps’ natural habitat, and the fact that they have large parts of their lives managed by humans. For example, controlled diets and feeding regimes contrast radically with the ever-changing foraging and decision-making processes of daily life in the wild.

One of the researchers, Dr Newton-Fisher, a primate behavioral ecologist and expert in wild chimpanzee behavior, said: “The best zoo environments, which include all zoos in this study, try hard to enrich the lives of the chimpanzees in their care. Their efforts include providing unpredictable feeding schedules and extractive foraging opportunities, and opportunities for normal social interactions by housing chimpanzees in social groups. There are limits to what zoos can provide, however; the apes are still in captivity.

“What we found in this study is that some abnormal behaviors persist despite interventions to 'naturalize' the captive conditions. The pervasive nature of abnormal behavior, and its persistence in the face of environmental enrichment and social group housing, raises the concern that at least some examples of such behavior are indicative of possible mental health problems.

“We suggest that captivity itself may be fundamental as a causal factor in the presence of persistent, low-level, abnormal behavior - and potentially more extreme levels in some individuals. Therefore, it is critical for us to learn more about how the chimpanzee mind copes with captivity, an issue with both scientific and welfare implications that will impact potential discussions concerning whether chimpanzees and similar species should be kept in captivity at all.”

Parallels can be drawn between the imprisoning of humans behind bars and the keeping of animals captive in zoos. But these animals are innocent of any crime. It is surely not surprising that when deprived of the social and physical richness and diversity of life in the wild, intelligent and emotional animals such as chimpanzees suffer. Research such as this adds to the growing weight of evidence supporting increasing concerns about the continued keeping of animals in zoos – especially our closest living relatives.

We know that humans and other great apes do it. Now a parrot has shown it can use logical reasoning to work out where food is hidden.

Sandra Mikolasch of the University of Vienna's Konrad Lorenz Research Station in Austria and her colleagues first checked that seven African grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus) had no preference for two types of food, seeds or walnuts.

Each parrot watched a researcher hide a walnut under one opaque cup and a seed under another. Then the researcher hid the cups behind a screen, removed one of the treats and showed the bird which one had been taken. Finally, the screen was removed to see if the parrot could work out which treat must remain, and under which cup it must be.

Only one of the parrots, a female called Awisa, was able to do this. She chose correctly in three-quarters of the tests – 23 out of 30.

As with similar studies using apes, not all parrots could solve the problem. The other parrots chose more randomly, suggesting they hadn't worked out what was going on. It seems that parrots, like apes show individual differences in their abilities to reason.

"So far, only great apes have been shown to master this task," says Mikolasch. "So we now know that a grey parrot is able to logically exclude one possibility in favour of another to get a reward, known as 'inference by exclusion'."

The confirmation that parrots can reason adds to our already considerable knowledge about their complex mental abilities. The term ‘bird brains’ couldn’t be further from the truth. The more we learn about these fascinating birds the more one must surely question how long it will be generally viewed as acceptable to keep them as pets, imprisoned in cages for our own reasons.

Thanks to Nick Craig (twitter @nickcraig) for the use of the photograph.

Andrew's groundbreaking work is underpinned by the fact that animals are sentient beings like us. In 2006 Andrew established the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics which aims to centre aims to encourage research into, and improve public debate on, the issues surrounding animal-related ethics. Having written many books, his latest venture for animals is to establish the world's first ever academic journal dedicated to the issue of animal ethics.

I was delighted that Andrew agreed to a short interview with OneKind to celebrate the launch of the new Journal of Animal Ethics.

Why do you believe animals other than humans are sentient?

There is now ample evidence in peer reviewed scientific journals that some animals (especially mammals and birds) can experience pain and suffering only to a greater or lesser extent than we do. It is important to grasp that animals don’t just experience pain (understood as an adverse physical stimuli) but that they can suffer, i.e. they experience mental pain, including fear, foreboding, anticipation, stress, trauma, and terror.

Why is this important?

Well, it means that these animals have complex systems of cognition and awareness. They can be harmed in ways that other beings cannot. They are – in the words of Tom Regan – “subjects of a life”. Such sentiency means that it is illogical not to extend moral consideration to them.

Why do you think peoples’ behaviour affecting animals is not always in line with their attitudes to animals?

Well, sadly, I do think that most people’s behaviour IS in line with their attitudes. Most people, I fear, have simply not grasped the full range of animal complexity. They don’t appreciate the variety of ways in which we can harm animals. Yes, most understand cruelty, but they don’t see that we can harm animals by depriving them, for example, of their freedom to perform their natural behavioural activities and to live in their own social groups.

How can we improve our behaviour towards other animals?

In my book Christianity and the Rights of Animals (1987), I argued that we need a programme of progressive disengagement - both individual and social - from injury to animals. I haven’t changed my view. We need to encourage and support people to move towards less violent and cruel lifestyles, and we need new legislation and institutions that embody that vision of a cruelty-free world.

What inspired you to create the new Journal of Animal Ethics?

The Journal of Animal Ethics is the latest project of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. The aim of the Centre is to pioneer ethical perspectives on animals through academic research, teaching, and publication. The Journal is part of the Centre’s aim to put animals on the intellectual agenda. It is devoted to the exploration of progressive thought about animals. It covers theoretical and applied aspects of animal ethics -- of interest to academics from the humanities and the sciences, as well as professionals working in the field of animal protection.

What do you hope the Journal of Animal Ethics will achieve?

A few simple ideas have governed our view of animals, e.g. they are here for our use, they can’t suffer like we do, and they don’t have any real moral status. These ideas have been vastly influential and still justify a great deal of abuse. We can’t change the world for animals without changing our ideas about animals. We have to move from the idea that animals are things, tools, machines, commodities, resources here for our use to the idea that as sentient beings they have their own inherent value and dignity. That requires a monumental intellectual change. The Journal is one step towards the new ethical thinking required.

If people want to help animals, what simple advice would you give them?

Read. Think. Study. Advocates need to make sure they know both the facts and the best ethical arguments. That can only come about by careful reading. There are now a wide range of books on animal ethics. Also, be prepared for a long haul with many disappointments. One needs to find much courage and inner Zen. Trying to change the world for animals isn’t for the fainthearted.

The Revd Professor Andrew Linzey is Director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and a member of the Faculty of Theology in the University of Oxford. He has published more than twenty books, including Creatures of the Same God (Winchester University Press/Lantern Press, 2007) and Why Animal Suffering Matters (Oxford University Press, 2009) (see right).

1. Praying mantis

Male praying mantis make the ultimate sacrifice for their kids and actually allow themselves to be eaten by a female when mating! Males are literally eaten alive and mating may even continue once the female has eaten his head! By becoming his mate’s meal he allows the female to use his valuable protein to make her eggs mature faster, thus increasing the chances of his young surviving.

2. Emperor Penguin

Male Emperor penguins really put themselves out for their young when it comes to babysitting. After mating in Antarctic temperatures of -50 degrees centigrade, the female lays one egg. This egg is then incubated or kept warm at 30 degrees centigrade on the male’s feet by a thick fold of skin that hangs from his belly. He then stands there at the mercy of the elements for two months! During this time he eats nothing and loses nearly half his body weight. Once the chick hatches he has no solid food left but feeds him or her liquids. Only when the female returns to the breeding site is his duty done and he can take to the sea in search of food for himself.

3. Sea Horse

The remarkable male sea horse takes on what might be thought of as usually a female’s greatest responsibility – he actually gives birth. The seahorse is the only creature where the male has a true reversed pregnancy. Male seahorses are equipped with a brood pouch on their front. When mating, the female deposits her eggs into his pouch, and the male fertilizes them internally. Dad then looks after the eggs for the 10-40 days until he is ready to give birth to up to 1,500 babies. Often not all of the babies will leave the pouch at the same time, but in several phases over some minutes or hours. In extreme cases it can take one or two days.

That's some pretty impressive fathers eh! If you think you know of any animal dads who beat these please let us know below.