This Sunday is Mother’s Day. There’s a special bond between mother and child, which can be observed not just in humans but throughout the natural world. It’s a relationship I often try and capture in my animal sculptures. So here for your enjoyment is a selection of Mother’s Day animal sculptures.

Motherhood can be a wonderful, life affirming experience. But let’s be honest, it’s not all plain sailing. There are plenty of sacrifices along the way.

After she lays an egg, an emperor penguin mother will walk up to 50 miles to the ocean to catch fish and then return to regurgitate that fish to her newly hatched chick (suddenly, having to pop down to the corner shop for another pint of milk doesn’t seem like such a big deal).

A polar bear mother will typically gain over 200 pounds in weight and will then have to spend nine months holed up in a tiny den in preparation for birth. She will not eat for between four and eight months!

With the longest gestation period of any mammal (22 months), elephant mothers nurse their calves for four to six years. Even after they are weaned, elephants stay with their mothers for about 16 years.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the relationship between an elephant and her calf is one of the strongest bonds in the animal kingdom, making the elephant my top pick of all my Mother’s Day animal sculptures.

Orangutans also develop a very strong bond with their offspring, which you will often see clutching to their mothers. Over the next six to seven years, baby orangutans learn everything from foraging to nest-building from their mothers. Older female orangutans even return to visit their mothers until they reach the age of 16.

Malayan Tapirs, which I have modelled only recently, also form close bonds. Wherever mum goes, the little baby is never far behind. This makes for wonderful sculptural possibilities.

As any mother will tell you, keeping tabs on the little ones isn’t always easy. But that isn’t a problem for harp seal mothers, who can identify their babies from hundreds of others based on smell alone.

Many animals carry their young. Alligators carry their babies in their jaw for protection. Once a baby joey becomes too big for her pouch, a koala bear mother will carry her child on her back.

Ring-tailed lemurs, which I have observed in the wild in Madagascar, cling to their mother’s abdomens as soon as they are born. When they are strong enough, they switch to mum’s back, where presumably the view is much better!

If you’ve enjoyed my Mother’s Day animal sculptures, you can always commission an animal sculpture of your own. Contact me without obligation for full details and quotation.