why most animals have litters of babies when they give birth, but when humans give birth to twins or triplets, it’s considered rare?
In: Biology
Welcome to the wonderful world of breeding strategies. In short, most animals can be categorized as as one of two breeding strategies.
Humans, elephants, great apes and others have a small number of offspring that take a relatively long time to raise and so require significant investment, but have a higher rate of survival.
The other, much more common strategy, is to have as many offspring as possible which require little or no additional resources from the parent. This could be a litter of eight or a clutch of THOUSANDS.
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