When a book entertains me with lots of good trivia, I may overlook its main points. That could easily happen with this book, which compares animal and human parenting.

Allport teaches sound science concepts, like "precocious" and "altricial" youngsters. "Precocial young" refers to their rate of development, rather than their mental or musical talent. Grazers and other prey animals are threatened by fast and strong predators. Their precocious babies have to be able to run soon after birth. "Their brains are like dim lights that turn on quickly," mostly instinct, with low problem solving ability.

Altricial young are born immature, and mature slowly with lots of care. These flourish in a stable environment or as predators. The brain resembles a powerful spotlight that is slow to warm up. Primates' brains continue to grow and develop more than most animals. The brain of a baby chimp will double as it matures. A human baby's brain will double twice as it matures.

Low fat - frequent feeders, and high fat - intermittent feeders:
 

Animal                   %Fat in mother's milk
Grizzly Bear               3%
Kangaroo (newly-born)      3%
Giraffe after 10 days      low fat
Primates                   low fat, high carbohydrate
Human                      4.2% fat
Sheep                      9%
Kangaroo (Joey 1+ yrs)     high fat
Giraffe (new born)         high fat
Bats                       high fat
Great Blue Whale           30% fat
Seals                      high fat, low carbohydrate
Small ringed seals         45% fat
Hooded seals               60% fat

Infant giraffes stay in one hidden spot while their mother feeds for hours. They get a high fat meal to last them several hours till she comes back. After 10 days the young can follow their mother around, and her milk quickly changes to the low fat/frequent feeder formula (probably due to demand response).

Human infants need very frequent doses of low fat human milk. They fuss a lot when they don't get it. Kangaroos often have a 1+ year-old joey who sticks his/her head in the pouch for a periodic drink of high fat milk. His/her younger sibling is born in an embryonic state and locks onto the other teat (high demand), which then supplies the newborn with low fat milk. Mother kangaroo has one teat supplying low fat milk and the other supplying high fat milk at the same time. You can read twenty books and not find trivia that good!

Or how about medieval goats which were trained to nurse human infants? They recognized "their" infant and refused to suckle other babies, and promptly came when the baby cried. The babies also recognized their goat "mother" and would not drink from a different goat.

Would you believe that certain wood roaches build a burrow under rotten logs, and care for their young 3-5 years before they mature?

Shakespeare fans in the American Acclimatization Society brought every kind of bird mentioned by Wm to the US, including the infamous starlings and English sparrows.

Gross trivia is the best kind:
Mammalian Fish! Amazon Discus fish secrete a nutritious mucous that their young feed on.
Vomitting Frogs! An Australian frog swallows her fertilized eggs and stops eating for several weeks, then disperses the young by projectile vomitting.
Cannibal Storks! The White Stork, mythical deliverer of human babies, actually eats runts, or all of its young if no food is available.
Sibblicide Sharks! White shark eggs hatch in the "womb", where the young feed on each other till birth.
Poison Dart Frog Infanticide! Mother poison dart frogs lay eggs in tiny pools of water that collect in air plants. When tadpoles develop, the mother frog will feed them her unhatched eggs from other pools.