Sisters and Brothers by Steve Jenkins

Author:Steve Jenkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

For the first few weeks of their lives, great crested grebe (greeb) chicks ride on their mother's back as she swims, hiding beneath her feathers. Soon the young birds get too large for her to carry, and she shakes them off. Now the chicks must swim on their own. As they paddle around, the young birds instinctively stay close to their brothers and sisters, and they all cluster around their mother. The chicks will leave the family group when they are about ten weeks old.

Sink or swim.

Stepsisters and stepbrothers

One big happy family.

After a mother cichlid (sick-lid) lays her eggs, she picks them up and carries them in her mouth to keep them safe. Sometimes, she gets more than she bargained for. A cuckoo catfish, lurking nearby, may have left some of her own eggs in the cichlid's nest. If the mother cuckoo catfish gets a chance, she will dart in and eat some of the cichlid's eggs the moment they are laid. Then she puts her own eggs in their place. The mother cichlid picks up the catfish eggs along with her own. She protects all of the eggs, and when they hatch, she raises the baby catfish alongside her own children. The young cichlids and their adopted catfish siblings swim into the mother cichlid's mouth whenever danger threatens.

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