Why do other animals have so many babies?

Question

i know this may sound stupid... but ive always wondered why other animals have more babys then humans. Dogs and cats have like 9 but humans have 1, sometimes more. Same with frogs, bugs, ext.

Answer 1

My grandmother had 16 kids (but not all at the same time.)

Answer 2

Most large mammals have single children (not, a litter). Those animals that do have single offspring are social (not solitary) and cooperate in defending the herd's young. Thus, it makes more sense for such an animal to put all its genetic eggs in one basket, as it were.

The alternative reproductive strategy is to have large numbers of offspring at once, with the expectation that few will survive. This will be found with many animals that either are solitary, or isolate themselves when giving birth/nursing.

Answer 3

Hi Red Sox,

the most popular explanation is that, in the wild, most of the babies don't survive. Whilst there is some support for this, the theory is not water tight. However, one notices that other monkeys rarely have more than one baby at a time.

I don't think that there is a clear cut answer available at the moment.

Blessed be.

Karma Singh

Answer 4

the greater the risk to survive the more babies born. the closer to the base of the food pyramid, the more likely to get caught and eaten.

so it is a matter of balance of the populations. flocks of herbivores feed a lesser number of carnivores. the number of prey always exceeds that of predator, until there is so many of them that this time the number of predators increase(eating more of them before)...but, still the number of prey will always exceed the number of predator or else the concerning class of predator is likely to starve to death in that area.

as for frogs, bugs, fish, etc...their larvae stay out in the open and there are so many of the larvae just to make sure one in a million or something is at least fertilized. because eggs easily get eaten by other animals, or they can easily die under bad conditions like low temperature and all

Answer 5

You will notice that in many cases, the more intelligent the organism, the less offspring it has. Additionally, more intelligent organisms generally take significantly longer to develop: for instance compare a human which takes about 13 years to reach maturity to a dog which will take around a year.  With that in mind it makes complete sense. If a human mother has 12 babies at once, think of the burden that would have on the mother having to raise 12 offspring in a 13 year period (of course this is assuming we are living in an age where there arn't things like baby sitters, etc). A dog is much more capable of raising the same 12 offspring in only a year, it doesn't need to devote nearly as much time.

Organisms such as a fish have thousands of offspring because the fish never even have to take care of the offspring.

Really it comes down to continuing the species and what would provide the best possible survival for the species. Fish never raise there offspring and once born, the fish need to fend for themselves. If a fish only had one egg and thus one baby, chances are it would get eaten right away and the species would end and lead to there extinction. Instead they have thousands, and a few hundred get eaten.

Answer 6

Probably an adaptation from an arboreal monkey ancestor.  You'll notice that monkey babies are pretty big compared with the mom, and there's room for only one to hang on while mom is running through the treetops.