Help! My teen is an animal! Just not sure if she's a wolf spider or Komodo dragon
Pick up any nature book and you’ll find amazing ways mothers take care of their babies. With the exception of the Komodo dragon, whose hatchlings hide out in the trees so their mothers don’t eat them, most of nature truly supports the raising of their young. It’s incredible.
The wolf spider, which many people have screamed and swatted and stomped, is a brown spider about one inch long that likes to live in your woodpile. The female lays around 100 eggs, and then carries them around on her back. When they are ready to hatch, she rips them open with her mouth and her babies go crazy bonkers and cover their mom’s body and legs and stay there for protection until they are ready to go off on their own and fend for themselves. This can take up to a few weeks.
More:I ate an orange in the shower and here’s what happened
There have been times in my years of mothering when I have felt like a wolf spider, with 100 hungry, squirmy babies hanging off my legs. And seeing as these little babies stay there until they are set to head off on their own, I imagine that in those few weeks, those spiderlings have gone from baby to teenager. And the thought of 100 teenagers hanging off my legs gives me more willies than thinking about spiders.
Nature's way of dealing with teen wolves
So then I started to wonder, how does nature handle teenagers? Surely there must be something we struggling humans can learn from them, right? Surely there must be some clues from the animal kingdom that can help us deal with rebellion and apathy and TikTok dances and AirPods and eye rolling, right?
Thankfully, scientists who are brave enough to mess around with teenage animals have done the work. They determined adolescent animals have four main things they focus on − staying alive, social status, growing into their sexuality and pretending to be adults. While survival isn’t as hard in a small town with supportive parents as it is in a jungle or desert, the rest of them sound just like human teenagers. Commiseration among the animal kingdom!
The more popular animals and stronger animals get higher rank in the herd and get the better girl/boyfriend. They rebel against their parents, looking danger in the eye to prove themselves worthy of adulthood … or die trying. We would never wish that for our human kids, but I can certainly see evidence of these habits firsthand. She who has the cutest clothes and does the TikTok dance the best, gets the better date for the dance where they all just dress up and act like the adults they almost are.
We will always love them like wolf spider babies, but there are times when I just can’t blame the Komodo dragon.
Reach Karrie McAllister at mckarrie@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Record: Raising teens. Flee like a Komodo dragon or cling like a wolf spider?
