Why does human birth always have so many complications? It seems as though it’s equally likely to hear about a complicated birth as it is to hear about a normal birth

Question

It seems like so often, and really more often than not, I hear about births having so many things go wrong with them. Why does it seem so hard for humans to hear have a normal birth with a healthy baby?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Bear in mind, plenty of animals also have complicated births and many mothers and babies die. This varies a lot by species (example: about [60% of hyena babies die during birth](https://africageographic.com/stories/good-bad-gory-birth-hyena-cub) and a lot of mothers die as well). I’m not sure where exactly humans are compared to other species, but we are not a *huge* outlier. But you don’t hear about this very often unless you are some kind of conservationist or farmer.