The title of the animal that gives birth to the most offspring at a time depends on many factors such as giving birth to babies or eggs, longevity and living alone or in groups.
There are millions of animal species on Earth, each with reproductive strategies that have evolved to suit their specific needs. According to Kathleen Cole, an ichthyologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the question of which species produces the most offspring per spawning session is complicated because there are many factors that influence the situation, according to Kathleen Cole, an ichthyologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Live Science.
First, the title of animal that gives birth to the most offspring depends on how offspring are defined. If you consider the offspring based on the number of gametes (unfertilized eggs and sperm) produced each time, the fish actually has an advantage. Releasing unfertilized eggs requires less energy than laying fertilized eggs, so animals that release unfertilized eggs and sperm into the water often have more eggs than other species.
Moonfish (Mola mola) has 300 million eggs in its uterus each time it reproduces. However, because the eggs are fertilized outside the female’s body, it is impossible to know how many of those eggs become viable offspring. After the female releases her eggs into the ocean, there is no way to know which egg belongs to her and to track each egg through the process of fertilization and development into young fish. However, although there is no official assessment of the number of sunfish in the ocean, they are on the list of vulnerable species in the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature because they are often caught by mistake by fishermen. Researchers consider them rare in the wild, so not all of the 300 million eggs become fry.
In terms of fertilizing eggs in one birth, insects may take the lead. Some ant species such as the African driver ant (Dorylus wilverthi) can lay 3 – 4 million eggs in about a month. The queen will choose to fertilize certain eggs depending on how many male and female offspring she wants.
In the bird world, partridges (Perdix perdix) is among the top egg-laying species with 22 eggs per clutch.
In terms of giving birth, male seahorses can give birth to up to 2,000 babies at a time, which they incubate and raise through the umbilical cord in the pouch.
The venomous viper is the obese snake (Bits ramming) ranks first among animals that give birth to many young on land. A fertile female snake once set a record of giving birth to 156 fully developed young snakes in one pregnancy. “They’re like giant sausages that can hold a lot of babies,” describes Alex Pyron, an evolutionary biologist at George Washington University in Washington, DC.
Why do these animals give birth so much when elephants and whales usually only give birth to one calf at a time? One of the factors that affects litter size is longevity. Short-lived animals that cannot survive to see their young develop often have many young per litter.
Species like bats that are light enough to fly and carry their young in the air cannot care for one young at a time. Animals that have to nurse their young after giving birth also have fewer young, often because more energy and resources are needed to raise them. Animals that give birth to live young tend to have fewer babies than animals that lay eggs, and species that live in groups like the African driver ant have more offspring than species that live alone because of the greater protection the group provides.