Happy Father's Day - Dad Facts

The American Museum of Natural History has made some cute Father's Day trivia cards on animal daddies. Check them out:

My dad gave me piggyback rides. These kids get froggyback rides!

Redefining what it means to be the dad. And the mom!

This dad-bird is the dad-word

Here are some of my own father facts:

• Mufasa was a great dad to Simba in The Lion King, but unfortunately that wasn't very accurate. According to Wikipedia male lions "tolerate" cubs. Sometimes a male cub will want to rule the pride like Simba did. In order to do this the cub will have to grow up strong and then kill every other male lion including his own daddy. (source)
• Have you ever been a clone of your father? Organisms that reproduce asexually like bacteria share the same DNA as their father/mother/parent. They are their dad. Or their dad is them. Or they are their great-great-grandfather... Look they're different, okay? That's cool.
• Some animals never meet their dad, let alone their parents. Reptiles, insects, and fish will never get this chance. Does that make them lucky or unfortunate?
• Wolf daddies rock. If their offspring could give them Father's Day presents they'd be getting the wolf equivalent of a new lawn mower or power tool. They guard their pups and give them freshly killed meat, which is something few animals dads let their offspring get. (source)
• Out of all the dads in the animal kingdom I will still defend my position that human fathers are the the most interesting. Maybe I'm biased, but think about this: we are basically the only animals species that have a chance at sharing a close relationship with our father throughout our life. Other species may live in a group consisting of all their relatives including parents, but once an animal reaches maturity their parents don't interact with them. Our parents may never stop being parents. We can look to them for advise our entire life and, something else that's unique in the animal world, we come to give them help, too. Humans are social animals and we have the strongest bonds with our parents.

But all this talk of a "good" animal dad or a "disinterested" one is pretty irrelevant. You are a human. You can't judge what's good or bad for a species based on what works for your own. It seems like an obvious point, but it's important to understand that a species behaves in a certain way because that's what has brought success in their environment (natural selection anyone?). Parenting is no different. Insects do just fine if they've never interacted with their parents and look how long they've lasted (hundreds of millions of years to be exact).

However there is one thing no organism can live without if it wasn't for their dad: half their genome. When fertilization occurs, a new living thing is created out of the DNA of their mother and the DNA of their father. There are, as always, exceptions but this is the basis of being alive. So at the very least, on this Father's Day thank your father for the genes he gave you. Without them you wouldn't be you.