Saturday, January 10, 2015

Why Having Twins is Rare in Humans?

How many rabbits does a rabbit give birth in one time? How many kittens does a cat give birth too in one time? The number of offspring in each birth for an organism cannot be too high or else it will consume so much energy from the mother and will also adversely affect the health and fitness of the offspring on the long term. The number of offspring in many organisms also is not too low, so that the organism can have enough offspring to propagate and expand. This is true in the animal kingdom and also in the plant kingdom when plants produce seeds for instance. Attempting to artificially increase the number of offspring per birth in animals or in plants may lead to adverse effects on the long term on the offspring or on the short term on the mother.

It would be interesting to explore how this pattern applies to humans when they produce twins, a single baby or not at all. In some cases humans may produce 3, 4, 5, 6 and up to 8 offspring at once! This would be interesting to examine in light of the above mentioned pattern.