Stress is a factor not only in the best human families; it also appears among animals. To see how bird family members interact with each other in stressful situations, researchers from Vetmeduni Vienna and the University of Gdansk, Poland, studied parent-offspring interactions in a long-lived seabird, the little auk (Alle alle). The scientists gave parent and offspring birds a hormone pellet to increase their “stress levels”, with the result that stressed offspring not only intensified their begging but also received more food than “relaxed” chicks. Nevertheless, increased begging was not the determining factor of the parent-offspring interaction. When parent birds were stressed, they automatically reduced offspring feeding and spent more time searching for food for themselves. The parent-offspring interaction among little auks therefore clearly depended on the state of the adult bird, even though little auks usually raise only a single chick. The results have been published in the Journal of Ornithology.