Parent's help

[Siamsal]

By and large, for as long as they live one's parents are always available to provide help and advice.

Is this behaviour peculiar to humans, or does it happen in other species as well?

Is it a result of the societies and structures we live in, or a completely innate thing?

[fairkatrina]

Yes and no. As a rule more highly developed family-orientated creatures (humans, dolphins, elephants, apes etc) are always to some extent indebted to the advice of older generations, not just their individual parents, for example matriarchs in elephant herds have taught younger members paths of migration or to food sources etc. In less developed or more solitary animals, much of the information they need to survive is imparted in them while still in the womb and is instinctive, so for example there is a type of small monkey that has different warning cries depending on the predator. Orphaned monkeys that have never had contact with other members of their own species were played tapes of these cries and responded corrrectly (for a big cat they climbed a tree, and for a hawk they hid on the ground), implying that they had learnt this 'language' genetically.