Mothers are carers, protectors, teachers and will do absolutely anything for their child's wellbeing, even in the animal world.

Just days out from the Australia's annual celebration of its mums, Mother's Day, a group of wildlife experts have named their top seven animal kingdom "super mums".

The list was compiled by University of Melbourne experts from the School of Bioscience, Professor Raoul Mulder and Dr Kath Handasyde, as well as aquarium curator and diving officer John Ahern.

Their top seven included the orang-utan, strawberry poison-dart frog, cuckoo, koala, cichlid, octopus and crab spider -- all great mothers for various reasons.

Orang-utans are so protective of their young they barely ever leave their mother's side, constantly carrying their baby around with them. For the first two years of their life, the baby is completely dependent on its mother and will be breastfed until the age of five.

The strawberry poison-dart frog treats its tadpoles like royalty, according to the Melbourne experts. The Central American frog drags each tadpole up high up into trees, from the pond below, to keep them safe.

The cuckoo bird is the ultimate "foster mum", the researchers said. Rather than caring for its eggs, the cuckoo gets another species to rear their young for them. The cuckoo mother does this by laying her eggs which mimic those of the unsuspecting mother in another bird's nest.

The cute and cuddly Australian koala is also a hands-on mother, in some cases happily carrying around their baby until almost half their size. The mother koala also finds it "virtually impossible" to ignore their baby's distress call, the experts said.

Some species of African cichlid fish store their eggs in their mouth for four weeks until their fry are independent. During this time the mother goes with eating.

Not to be outdone, octopus mothers often starve themselves to death. After laying her eggs, the octopus won't leave the eggs unattended - leaving no time to go hunting for food.

In a phenomenon known as matriphagy, the crab spider is consumed by her young. After hatching, the baby crabs swarm over their mother and "literally suck her dry and then start cannibalizing her", Mulder said.

Mother's Day celebrations began in the United States in the early part of the 20th century. More than a 100 years on, the day is marked around the world in countries including the United States, Britain, India, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Turkey, Australia, Mexico, Canada, China, Japan and Belgium.

Every year, Mother's Day is celebrated on the second Sunday of May in Australia.