Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
Bees, ants and some wasps, I will grant you, but the mother is alive and more or less in charge in those cases. Drive by adoption is not going to work, in my humble opinion, there isn't sufficient genetic connection.
I hear humans practice adoption on occasion; it seems viable. And in a species where neither parent survives as a matter of course, there's little basis to expect a hereditary connection to be a factor in the first place.