The following is an aticle I translated from a Chinese magazine. It's just a writing exercise. Thanks for any suggestions. And I really want a friend to practice English and Chinese together, if you're interested, please contact (*_*)
Great Love of Snub-Nosed Monkey Mothers for Offspring
People are generous with their praise for human mothers' love for children, but do you know snub-nosed monkey mothers are also mothers of the year？
Snub-nosed monkey mothers take raising their young as the top priority. Loving their babies much more than loving themselves, mothers do their best to take care of babies even when they have to suffer from hunger or cold. After a monkey baby is born, its mother will cuddle it tightly in her arms the same way a human mother holds a baby in swaddling, and uses her tongue to gently lick the monkey baby to dry its wet coats. When the baby grasps the mother's fur and eagerly looks for milk, the mother quickly puts her nipple into the baby's mouth and the little thing just starts to suck. Monkey babies can grow up with mothers' sweet milk and meticulous care. In cold weather, the whole monkey family will cuddle together with babies hiding warmly in the middle, reflecting a family virtue: care for the young.
If a monkey father wants to kiss his baby, he has to do all he can to please his wife, such as grooming her or cleaning up crusts for her. Unfortunately, the mother, unwilling to give the father a chance, stares at him angrily or just runs away, because she fears that her husband would be so rude as to scare the baby. It's very interesting that monkey mothers refuse to let their husbands to get close to babies but welcome other females in the family. Mothers even take care of each other's babies. Some young female monkeys want to take part in childcare too. They curiously hold a little sister, brother or a neighbor's baby, running into the troop and showing off. Mothers never trust those young girls and will follow up closely to protect their babies. Such behavior is called aunt phenomenon or sister behavior by some experts. This not only allows breastfeeding monkeys to have enough time to rest but also gives young female monkeys that have not given birth a chance to learn childcare, promoting family relationships.
Monkey genes are the most similar to human genes. However, snub-nosed monkey babies enter the youth rebellion period earlier than human babies and therefore monkey mothers have to worry about the babies a dozen years earlier than human mothers. A half month after birth, monkey babies want to get out of mothers' arms and explore the outside world. Every time when a baby wants to venture, the mother just holds it tightly into her chest or grabs its tail, never letting it go. When the baby grows bigger, it can go out for food with its mother, wrapping arms around mother's waist and hanging under her belly. However, the mother knows that her sweet heart will some day leave the family and set off into the big world alone, so she lets it play several meters away, giving it more freedom and looking at it kindly. If babies fight over trifles, mothers rush over to stop the fight or reprimand those naughty babies. But if they are in danger, monkey mothers as well as other adult monkeys will escape with babies and risk their lives to protect the babies. If they are sure that there is no way out, they will eagerly take the time to nurse babies lest the babies should be hungry after they die, and even beg predators to let themselves die for the babies.
Yong Yange, a panda expert, told me a story about a snub-nosed monkey mother sacrificing her own life to save her baby. He said that a female snub-nosed monkey with a baby was chased and treed by the hunters in his village. The tree was tall and around it there was no place for them to hide. They were cornered. A hunter with the excellent marksmanship aimed at them and was ready to shoot. With the black hole of the muzzle pointing at her and the baby, the monkey mother was in a desperate situation, but she held the baby in her arms and calmly fed it. After the baby drunk enough, she nested it on a nearby fork, picked some leaves, squeezed as much milk as possible into these leaves and placed the milk within the reach of the baby. After doing everything, she pointed the baby with her left hand, kept swinging her arm, and then put her hands on her chest. Her body language seemed to express: Kill me! Just kill me! I'm begging you to have mercy for my baby! She had done everything she could and then put her face in hands, calmly waiting for death. The hunter's hard heart was melted the moment he understood what the monkey mother tried to tell. He knew that he was facing a great mother rather than a monkey. He dropped the gun powerlessly and never hunted again.
We were deeply touched by this story. There is another moving story about monkey mothers carrying around their dead babies, showing extreme but great mother love. In the middle of April of that year, the Qinling mountains experienced a cold spring with fierce snow and winds lasting for several days. A little monkey was found dead due to cold or hunger in an eco-tourism region of the Daping Vallay in the Foping county. When eco-tourism region staff found this dead monkey, its head and arms were barely hanging on its mother's arms while its mummified body kept sliding down like a pile of sludge. Even so, the mother still held the baby tightly, looking intently into it and trying to keep it clean.
Finally, the monkey mother realized that her baby was dead. Her eyes were even more sad and she jumped up and down like crazy. Watching other mothers and babies happily tumbling and jumping, she just held her baby and hid in the distance. Her grief screaming broke our hearts. More than ten days later, the baby's body was too dried to recognize its original appearance. However, the mother was tough and still believed that her baby was alive. She licked the baby hair from time to time and carried the dead body while foraging.
It was hard for me to see the monkey mother lose so much weight in those days. Carrying a dead body while foraging was never an easy job. I tried to bury the dead baby but couldn't, because the monkey mother either ran away with her baby's body or bit and scratched me every time she noticed I approached them… said an eco-tourism region staff with red eyes.