Do other animals suffer as we do?

[socktastic]

Do pandas experience pregnancy sickness and go off bamboo?
Do dogs develop a super-er sense of smell than normal?
Do sloths sleep more?
Is there such a thing as a literal moody cow?
Or are all these wonderful experiences reserved for humans alone?

Horses certainly get moody, and uncomfortable!

Every time someone compares a human pregnancy to an animal one in the sense of 'my pig/cat didn't fuss this much when carrying a handful of babies, and you're only carrying one!' I just want to rip their throat out.

I watched a programme and a pregnant orangutan got sick and off her food

and definitely the actual childbirth is a lot more risky in humans than animals because of our comically massive heads.

some scientists talk about the first three months of an infant's life being the fourth trimester. most baby animals are born with some ability to look after themselves (look at fawns, who are running an hour after birth) but if we were to stay in the womb any longer our huge heads would never make it out.

I watched a programme that featured a kangaroo giving birth. The tiny joey crawled out of it's mother on its own and up her fur to put itself in the pouch. Looked so simple and painless. Rather jealous.

Dd2 was early and her head circumference was on the 98th centile, l consider myself lucky in that instance!

Dh and l were talking about bf last night having stopped at 3 months with dd2 and 8 with dd1. I wondered if in say 100 years people would be like, you put up with 2 hourly feeds and hours of cluster feeding why?

Maybe not, but l do think we've got some further evolving to do