(In the wild not in zoos)
In: Biology
If Mom doesn’t bite the cord, sometimes it just breaks when the baby is born. It likely depends on the animal and how they give birth. Many bigger animals have a relatively large drop of Mom births standing up, so it’ll snap when the baby falls to the ground, or when Mom stands up after they’re born.
What do you mean there’s no one to cut it? Momma’s got teeth and I don’t know how you get born without a momma around.
For many animals it just falls off in time, though. For others, mom might go as far as to eat the placenta (what’s on the other end of the cord).
As others have said, the mothers often bite them off. We had a goat give birth to multiples and the cords detached from the placenta when the babies came out. They’re left with a few inches of cord that just shrivels up and falls off within the first couple of weeks.
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