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5 Most Extreme Animal Births You've Never Seen
Giving birth to the next generation is no cake walk and you know this if you’ve ever
been through it as a mother or waited outside a maternity ward, listening to the nerve wrecking
screams!
It might be a little discomfort before the biggest joy of your life but it comes with
great physical and emotional turmoil.
The process of giving birth can be an extreme event for mothers or for fathers in case you
are a sea horse!
Above and beyond these jokes, motherhood comes with its own set of challenges which begin
with the birthing process and we salute all the mothers in world for their sacrifice.
You may know the pain the women in your life have gone through but how about we peep into
the animal kingdom?
Hold your breath because here we present to you the most extreme births in the animal
kingdom!
Number 1.
Prehensile-tailed porcupine One of the toughest births in the animal kingdom
is that of a prehensile-tailed porcupine!
This porcupine is found in Central and South America with their most notable feature being
their unspined prehensile tails.
Coming to their birth, it comes with 2 extreme events.
Firstly, these porcupine babies are born fully quilled.
Giving birth to a lot of pricks is beyond scary!
Thankfully the quills are soft in the womb but alas, they harden on exposure to air.
Still giving birth can be difficult, especially if the baby is born bottom first.
If this is not enough, the second problem arises which is the place of birth- tree.
Confused?
Even though people haven’t seen a porcupine falling out of a tree, it happens often in
the wild!
Imagine you are a porcupine and you hang on to a branch for dear life while the umbilicus
comes off.
Yikes!
Number 2.
Spotted hyenas Of course you’ve heard about the laughing
hyena, native to Sub-Saharan Africa, they are in abundance!
But it is ironic that an animal nicknamed as laughing hyena has a tough time giving
birth, in fact, a spotted hyena birth is not for the faint hearts!
It might sound really weird to you that high-ranking female spotted hyenas expose their fetuses
to high levels of androgen, a male sex hormone linked to aggression during the final stages
of pregnancy.
As you may have already guessed, this extra androgen makes the pups more aggressive, giving
them an edge over their peers.
But what you don’t know is that this little exercise causes the mother’s genitalia to
grow, in fact the *** which contains the birth canal, can extend 7 inches and look
like a ***.
Giving birth through the ***, bizarre!
But that’s not where the actual problem lies, the birth canal is just an inch in diameter
and a 12 pound pup can rip through the tissue as it exits the mother.
This is the reason for the high death rate among first-time hyena mothers.
Now you wouldn’t want to witness it, would you?
Number 3.
Kiwi Did you know that In proportion to its body
size, New Zealand’s iconic kiwi bird lays the largest egg out of any bird on Earth?
Now you’d want to compare it to its ancestors of emu and ostrich but where an emu’s egg
takes 2% of their mother’s body weight, kiwi eggs take up almost 25%.
Let’s shock you a bit more.
It is believed that once upon a time kiwi was as big as emu but evolution caused the
bird to shrink in size.
Even though it turned small, its egg did not, now that’s unfair!
Another shocking thing is that kiwi lays about 100 eggs a year and with that size, it must
be hella painful!
Every cloud has a silver lining and kiwi birth problems live this saying to the max!
The size of kiwi’s egg might be too big for the bird but it has an advantage- the
bigger yolk in the egg means that the chick will be well-nourished and the mother won’t
have to invest much after it hatches!
Now you know why they bear this pain!
Number 4.
Tasmanian devil You should feel lucky that you are not a female
Tasmanian devil!
This carnivore marsupial found in the wild on the island of Tasmania is the size of a
small dog.
But you aren’t interested in all that so we’ll move to the mating which by the way
is tough for the females!
Now during the mating season, a female may mate with many males and is therefore capable
of giving birth to many young, some of which may have been fathered by different males.
And the males tend to guard their female till 9 days after copulation to increase his chances
of fathering a majority of the litter.
During guarding the males don’t let the females eat for the remainder of the mating
period, which can last up to 2 weeks.
The poor female needs to be healthy before she mates otherwise she won’t survive this
starvation and if she wants to escape, she’ll have to fight her guard!
Oh we forgot to tell you that the love making is also devoid of any love because the males
drag their mate to the den and make her submissive of him to reproduce.
Now if we talk about the birthing, up to 50 pups are born at a time and move to their
mother’s pouch where only 4 nipples can feed them.
You guessed it right, they have to fight each other for the food which leads to the starvation
of all but 4 pups!
Number 5.
Desert spider If we could give away the “Mum of the Year”
award among different species, we would give it to the desert spider every year!
We mean how selfless and sacrificing can a mother get?
We know most mothers can do anything for their babies but for the desert spider this anything
means to allow her hundreds of babies to dissolve her inside out so that they can feast on her
nutritious body for survival.
This gruesome process is called matriphagy where the babies crawl to the mother’s head,
trying to get at the liquid oozing from her face.
They eventually find the source of the liquid and pierce her abdomen with their mouths,
allowing them to eat their mother’s liquefied guts.
Why does she do this?
Well, the mother desert spider sacrifices herself as prey to her babies to wake up their
hunting skills which are essential for their survival in the big world!
Which of these extreme animal births shocked you the most?
Tell us in the comment section below.
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