Wouldn’t it be more of a survival advantage to give birth at any time of year instead of just a highly competitive window of time?
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They live outside so it’s a survival strategy to time it and optimize the lives of the most reproductively viable offspring
Who says we humans dont have seasons. Carnaval and Spring are our mating season time in my opinion. But it probably more depends on the climate. Winter and rain seasons bring people closer together, which results in babies. Or pressure holidays like Christmas.
Animals do not have social structure with benefits like humans do. So they mate in seasons to try to give birth in more or less safe period of the year
Some animals that have more seasonal lifestyles will have reproductive cycles that are tailored to that. For example, bears spend the winter hibernating to conserve food; they’re not going to be active to also mate during that time.
At the same time, since they’re stationary for a long while, that’s a good time for their offspring to gestate (winter) and be born (spring). The mother can nurse the cubs in the safety of the hibernation den, so that when she breaks hibernation, the cubs are old enough to walk around on their own.
Because animals are impacted by their environment. Take a zebra as an example: It wouldn’t make much sense to bear offspring in a dry season. They’ll have to wait for rainfalls. Now take the Lion as an example: It doesn’t make much sense to bear offspring when Zebras don’t bear offspring that the Lions could hunt and feed their offspring on. So they’ll wait until the Zebras have offspring.
There is a great example about the egg laying date in Great Tits and how it’s synchronised to the emergence of caterpillars. (Nussey et al., 2005, Charmantier et al., 2008, Vedder et al., 2013)
It is also a survival strategy where there are predators. There is safety in numbers.
If the antelopes all gave birth at random times around the year, the lions would have food all year and their population would grow, and most antelope young would be eaten.
If the antelopes all give birth at once, the lions can only eat so much before they are stuffed full. So more antelope grow up, and are big and fast enough to out-run the lions, and the lions don’t get so much to eat, so their population does not expand so much.
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It’s more advantageous to give birth when you’ll be able to more easily provide for your young, so you want to time it for spring or so, not the dead of winter depending on biome and food source, not claiming this is universal. It is also only one factor.
Humans don’t have to worry about that anymore, but even many primates don’t have seasons. Social groups, clines that don’t have harsh winters, and other aspects may lessen the need for a season.
Another aspect of the whole idea of mate selection. A single male can impregnate many females. If all the females are ready to breed at the same time, it limits a single male’s ability to dominate the genre pool and forces him to be more invested in the offspring of a single female. It’s better for the gene pool and the offspring.
Nothing is absolute of course. Different species have different strategies, so don’t try to apply anything too broadly.
If a couple were homeless would they try they try to have kids on the street or once they find a suitable hotel room or some private place?
Same logic applies.
It’s the other way around. It’s a competitive advantage to give birth at the right time of year when food is bountiful, etc. Also quite a few species raise their young (or give birth) as a community so it wouldn’t make sense to just have kids all willy nilly.
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