Factors Governing the Onset and Maintenance of Maternal Behavior among Nonprimate Mammals

This chapter will review what is known about the factors which regulate the onset and maintenance of maternal behavior among nonprimate mammals. Maternal behavior is an outgrowth of the endocrinological processes which regulate pregnancy and parturition; therefore, in order to understand the factors which govern its onset, it is necessary to study the endocrine control of pregnancy in each species. In addition, many of the procedures used to investigate the onset of maternal behavior (e.g., hormone administration, hysterectomy, caesarean-section delivery, prostaglandin administration, ovariectomy, etc.) alter the normal course of pregnancy in specified ways that can only be understood with reference to the normal endocrine control of pregnancy.