The Moms in New on Earth
One of the first things that stands out about New on Earth is how it features animal moms. There’s a tenderness to seeing baby animals and their mothers together that’s reminiscent of what we might see with humans. In fact, Eszterhas said that moms in the animal world are actually very similar to moms in the human world.
“They’re very much like people in the fact that there are good moms and there are bad moms. The moms have good days. They have bad days. They have moods, they have personalities,” she said. “You know, you’ve got a mom that’s always grumpy and never likes to play with her babies. And then you’ll have a mom that absolutely loves to play with her babies.”
A meerkat mom she photographed, for instance, was “the worst of the worst.” Eszterhas described her as a milk machine that fed her pups and then left to go foraging all day, leaving the parental care to the dad and the subadult. But there are also “supermoms,” like the cheetah who leaped on the back of a hyena that was threatening her and her cubs. Considering that cheetahs’ only defense from predators is to run—they don’t usually fight them—this was not typical. It was an incredible act of bravery.
