This study examined to what extent parental animals are intrinsically sensitive to neonatal vocalizations, or instead learn about vocal cues for parenting responses. In mice, naive virgins do not recognize the meaning of pup distress calls, but retrieve isolated pups to the nest following cohousing with a mother and litter. For this study, C57BL/6J virgin females were used in all experiments. The dataset contains electrophysiology, imaging, and behavioral data. This study indicates that the onset of pup retrieval in mice results from interactions between innate and learned processes.