As I continued to watch the LIFE STORY DVD, I learned something else that I had never even heard of before.

Strangely, it also had to do with the birth of a certain kind of wild animal. When I had been watching earlier, I learned that dolphins give birth backwards. When I watched more, I learned about something that happens after the birth of a wildebeest.

Many of us already know that Wildebeests live on the continent of Africa, and face some pretty serious difficulties in their lives. Drought and migrations can take their own toll on these creatures, and it seem like predators are constantly hunting these beasts down. Wild dogs, Cheetahs, Crocodiles, Hyenas, and Lions all like to prey on the Wildebeest herds.

In many ways, it has become a world where you need to be very cautious or you will be killed and eaten out there in the wild. The hurt, old, sick, and very young are the most vulnerable. In ways, when big predators kill the weak and sick, it helps the remaining herd to be more healthy. by removing the ones that could infect others. If anything is left of the carcass after the larger beasts feed off of it, the scavengers quickly come to finish the job.

Being able to avoid getting eaten is very important for every young Wildebeest, and it seem that the mother helps in this process. A newborn Wildebeest can run one hour after birth, and fully keep up with the herd within days.

As many people know, a baby is not all that comes out during a birth; there is also the afterbirth, which is mainly the placenta. How quickly the placenta detaches and is "birthed" can vary, but the mother Wildebeests can actually time when it happens. Since, to many predators, the afterbirth is just a delicious pile of bloody meat, it can attract a variety of predators to the source of the birth if it is passed right away.

When there are no predators in the area, the mother Wildebeests will let the afterbirth come out naturally, relatively soon after the birth. However, if the mother knows or believes that predators are lurking nearby, she will wait up until an hour after birth, when the baby calf is ready to run, to birth the placenta. Remarkably, she will often head off in one direction to deposit the afterbirth, then come back to the newborn calf and leave with her young calf in the opposite direction!

This displays an incredible amount of awareness on behalf of the Wildebeest, and an incredible amount of built-in capability too. How incredibly designed the creatures of earth really are!