why animals like dogs and cats can give birth to multiple offspring at a time whereas humans can only give birth to (most of the time) one child only at a time?
In: Biology
Human infants are significantly more developed than newborn animals that make “litters” of young. This is because our monkey ancestors spent a lot of time in trees and the infant needed the ability to strongly grasp our mother while they moved around. An infant can grasp strong enough to hold up it’s own weight very quickly. While a new born puppy or kitten has to be taken care of for weeks by the mother. They have to spend nearly all their time an energy taking care of their young.
That’s not a problem for predators like dogs and cats. Nothing is probably actively hunting their ancestors. It’s not a problem for prey animals that just don’t take good care of their young because they breed so often, like rabbits. But for other animals, we need a more developed child. Horses are born and stand rather quickly because their survival means they need to stay with the moving herd of animals. Horses survival strategy is run so fast you can’t catch us. So a foal is on its legs and running within a day of birth or it becomes a target for predators.
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