Seems to me that even with our advances we suffer from an excessive amount of complications for a natural act.
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Not if you narrow it down to mammals, especially mammals that have few offspring. You exist to propagate your genes. You have to push the envelope, put yourself in harm’s way. You’ve got to leave everything on the field. If you don’t, your descendants will be outnumbered by the descendants of those who did.
So, there is the thing about humans and skulls and brains and pelvic structure, yes. But lots of other species push the envelope in other ways, not just brain pans, most notably in twins. We’re hardly the only mammal that typically has one offspring. Twins are hard for a human. They’re also hard on deer and whales, but they have twins. Whales, not as often. Deer, it’s more common than it is in humans. And it’s dangerous for them. If it weren’t, they’d have twins all the time. Which they don’t.
So, moose die while birthing twins. Not all the time, or they’d evolve to never have twins. They’re gambling that it’ll turn out okay, and that if it doesn’t, they had plenty of singleton moslings already to carry on the line.
Evolution is a numbers game. Playing it safe so you can live a long time after your last child is ready to reproduce isn’t a great strategy. That’s as true for mooses as it was for your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandma.
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