What difference between human and non-human biology allows for non-human animals to give birth to such large litters, versus humans who have so few, comparatively?
In: Biology
It is a sliding scale of quantity vs quality. An animal that produces the most young will spend less time and energy raising young because out of the many a few will survive to maturity. If an adult wastes more energy and time growing and raising young they will have fewer young, but by raising the young they have a better guarantee that the young will survive. Because of the amount of time and attention to raise young it’s better to focus the time and energy to a few or one.
Likewise this actually happens in human population as well. It has been shown time and again that the more likely children who make it to adulthood the fewer children a woman have.
I forgot to add that primates mainly have one offspring on a whole, though some lemurs will habitually have twins. I have heard that mammals will have twice as many nipples as normal offspring numbers.
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