13 You see how a mother’s love for her children is a very complex feeling. Everything is focused on a sympathy that she feels for them deep down inside.
14 Even animals without understanding have sympathy and love for their young, just as human beings do.
15 For example, birds do this. The tame ones protect their young by building their nests on the roof of a house.
16 Other birds build their nests on mountain peaks, in steep canyons, and in the holes of trees or treetops, so they can hatch the baby birds and stop anything from coming too close.
17 If they can’t stop something from coming too close, they do whatever they can to help their young. They fly in circles around their young driven by anguished love, warning their young with their calls.
18 But why is it necessary to demonstrate the fact that animals without understanding have sympathy for their young?
19 When it is time to build their hive, even the bees defend themselves against those who come too close. They sting like an iron dart anyone who comes near the hive, and fight even to the death.