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Because you watch SciShow, Brilliant  is offering you a 30-day free trial and 20% off an annual premium  subscription at Brilliant.org/SciShow. In a time when that whole ‘being  alive’ thing costs more than ever and jobs are tough to come by, it can  really sting to see someone get handed everything for free because one of  their parents are rich or famous.

You know. The trust fund kids. The nepo babies.

We humans might comfort ourselves by  saying that at least animals don’t do that. Everyone has to compete for everything, right? Level playing field out there in the wild?

Well… no. Plenty of animal species transfer their wealth across generations just as much as we do. Let’s meet a few of these privileged species, and see the different ways they benefit  from the bank account of mom and dad. [♪ INTRO] If we define “privilege” as differential  access to inherited resources, then privilege is alive and  well in the animal kingdom.

This may seem hard to grasp at first. What, so a mountain gorilla has  a trust fund for his kids now? But for an animal, we can refer to “wealth”  as any resource that matters to them.

Homes, food, territory, and  other things that they need can provide a huge leg up if  you get them right off the bat. And animal parents will absolutely  provide that edge if they can. After all, it’s their genes on the line.

This can happen in almost every  class of animal on the tree of life, so even bugs and fish can grow up as nepo babies. Or reptiles. Like the White’s rock skink.

These skinks are monogamous, territorial,  and most importantly, social. They bear live young over the course  of a couple of days in summer, and the babies will generally live  in family groups with the adults. But it’s when the little ones grow up that  the parental influence comes into play.

Many animals disperse, which is to say  they leave home, usually in order to find mating opportunities that they won’t have  at home surrounded by their relatives. And the skinks are no different. Except that they only tend to disperse  when it’s relatively safe to do so.

When the population gets high and the  local areas are saturated with skinks, the young will often wait longer to  disperse – meaning they stay home and get to live in their parents’  preexisting territory with them. Basically living in Mom and  Dad’s basement after college. A 2017 study showed that skinks who  did this had better body condition at the end of the study period.

And that might be because the  skinks are pretty competitive. Adult skinks will defend their  territory from unrelated juveniles. So if a disperser turns up, the study  showed they’re pretty likely to, well, not make it, especially in scenarios where  there was a lot of competition for territory.

In those high-competition scenarios,  juveniles in poorer body condition would wait longer to disperse –  crashing in the basement, basically – and that would give them more  time to grow up big and strong. While the study didn’t follow all of  these individuals until they dispersed, it did show that when competition was high, the non-dispersers had better body  condition by the end of the study. But with that said, it’s only the mother’s  favorites that get this privilege.

Delayed dispersers tended to be  the ones that frequently interacted with the mother and had  positive associations with her. The mother skink might even bite  and chase away her own offspring if she’s not friendly with them. So not only are they nepo  babies, the successful skinks that engage in delayed dispersal  are momma’s boys and girls too.

Territory is one of the most important  things an animal can inherit, so we’re going to see that it’s the animal  equivalent of a trust fund in a lot of cases. But in our next animal, the Seychelles warbler, they do things a little  differently than the skinks. Warblers will perform a behavior  known as territorial budding.

This is where chicks will carve out a chunk of the parents’ and neighbors’  territory to live in. The chicks will then actively defend  that territory against other warblers, including the parents they got it from. This is also thought to be  a response to territories being heavily saturated with competition.

According to a 2001 study, the warblers  who inherited the budded areas didn’t do all that well to start with, at least in  terms of having lots of chicks of their own. However, it did let them stay in good  condition and close to high quality areas – meaning Mom and Dad’s primo real estate,  not to mention their rich neighbors. That means the chicks were able to  carve out high-quality territory, including from their parents, and enjoyed a high degree of reproductive  success for the rest of their lives.

So it’s like the budded area is  the summer home they’re crashing in until it comes time for them  to inherit the family mansion. Not all warblers were trust fund kids. Some were rarely present in the  family territory or anywhere nearby.

And others stuck close to the main nest and helped their parents rear  their little brothers and sisters. This sounds nice, but neither strategy  ever resulted in those warblers inheriting their parents’ territory, and it was rare  they were ever very successful at all. Both strategies had very low reproductive  success compared to the budders, and the helpers actually  decreased their parents’ success by basically eating them out of house and home.

Man. I guess nice warblers really do finish last. Next up is the black hover wasp.

They’re small, social wasps  who live in small families, typically between two and four,  though the count can go as high as 15. In these family units there’s  just one breeding female. The female young have a choice: they can  either head off on their own to disperse, or stick around and help out the parents.

While they’re in this stage of  their life, the helpers won’t breed, although any adult in the small  colony technically can do so. But should the current prima donna pass  on, that’s when they inherit everything. They get the nest, and the staff – their  mother’s helpers now become theirs.

In short, it’s a lot easier than  having to do everything yourself like the dispersers have to. Of course, there’s a strict pecking order here. The other females hanging around  effectively line up for this right, with the eldest female being the  one to inherit the family business.

But tenures at the top can be short. These wasps’ lifespans aren’t the longest. So when one family member inherits everything, the rest get to play a risky waiting game.

On the one hand, there’s a decent  chance that the wasp in charge will bite it and everyone  will get to move up in line. On the other, even if she does die, the  helpers are still probably raising her young after she’s dead, not yours,  contributing to her success. And while that might sound pretty cutthroat, it’s still a good bet compared to the dispersers.

If all the females in the colony are related, all their genes are getting passed down. Plus, a lot of the wasps who stick around will get their turn to be a breeder  as well, thanks to all the turnover. I’m not sure I could personally  handle all that drama.

I’m with the dispersers on this one. Which brings us to an even  more social insect: termites. Like ants and bees, termites  live in big social colonies.

Unlike ants and bees, they have  both a king and queen at the top. Scientists have exhibited, like, kind  of an alarming amount of interest in what happens when you remove that royal couple. Seriously, we were able to find a weird  amount of experiments in different species where researchers took out the king and queen.

In the species where it’s been  done, the kids inherit the throne. Obviously, termites don’t have a  designated crown prince or princess. Instead, younger individuals  will become sexually mature in order to become the top breeding  pair and assume control of the colony.

In some cases they can change from  citizen to royalty in just a few weeks, and then become physogastric in a few more. That is what you call it when an ant or  termite queen gets all huge and lumpy in their baby making phase, and I just  really wanted to share that fact with you. It’s a-.

It’s a word. And it’s a cool word.. For all these experiments, though,  it still isn’t clear how it’s decided exactly who gets the honor  of ascending to royalty.

There seems to be an element  of luck for these nepo babies, in case you needed a reason to resent them more. Next up is the familiar red squirrel. As we all know, squirrels love nuts,  and they’re famous for burying them for the winter in big caches,  which are known as middens.

These middens then form the  core of their territories. But sometimes, females will make more than one, and donate the second midden to their offspring. Not all of them do this, only  around 20% according to one study, and it’s specifically the  most experienced individuals.

On top of that, certain environmental  conditions can make it more likely for the mothers to give such  generous gifts to their young. A 2015 study found they did so in lean years, specifically ones where the next year  things were looking a lot better. Maybe because they knew they’d be able to find their own food resources in better times.

But the parents that do this are  giving their kids a huge boost. It increases their chances of securing  their own territory around that midden – and they probably won’t be  surviving the winter without that. This is also good for the parent, since she’s improving her kid’s  chance of passing on her own genes.

It really is amazing the difference  a small loan of a million acorns makes to a squirrel’s chances in life. But our most privileged nepo  baby is the spotted hyena. There may not be another animal  whose future is decided so completely by who their parents are.

The hyenas live in groups that  usually have a matriarch at the top. Cubs inherit their social rank from their  mother, slotting in right below her position. So how does this translate  into actual benefits for them?

Well, for a start, more and better food. High ranking ladies grab more food from kills, and so eat better and produce more milk  for their cubs – meaning healthier babies. This also means the cubs are  weaned sooner and grow faster.

High-rankers also win out in  interactions with other hyenas due to the social support they  get from the rest of their group. Kind of like having a posse to back you up. Naturally, this privilege is  extended to the young as well.

So overall, everyone has their  back, and they get the choice cuts. It’s already looking pretty good. But just like so many animals we’ve talked about, male hyenas tend to disperse to  find mates they’re not related to.

And they still continue to benefit. High born boys will continue to reap the rewards of their mother’s rank their whole lives. They disperse into clans with more  young females for them as mates.

High ranking moms set them up  for success from an early age, feeding them better and helping  them live longer overall. That means higher-status young males  can invest more time and energy into searching for, and building  relationships with, suitable future mates. As a result, these males have a  higher reproductive success rate than males with lower-status moms.

All in all, the kids of the mothers at the  top will continue to benefit significantly from that association their entire life. Many of these examples show that  in nature, nepo babies are a way for parents to increase their own  evolutionary success – basically making sure they’ll have grandkids who’ll  continue to pass on their genes. And as frustrating as it might feel, these animals are really just  doing what’s best for their kids.

And it’s hard to fault them for that. Thanks for watching this SciShow List Show and thanks to Brilliant for supporting it! Brilliant makes online learning interactive, with thousands of lessons in  science, computer science, and math.

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Thanks for learning with us. [♪ OUTRO]