Yo Mama
Let’s just start here by saying you should be glad you’re not an elephant.
First of all, you think you had a bad adolescence? Ha! Boy elephants go through a physical season called musth that’s worse than any little zit constellation you ever had. Boy elephants get super-smelly and super-aggressive, with a 60-fold increase in testosterone; they’re oily and grouchy; they pee on themselves. This goes on for up to 12 weeks, once a year. Like puberty, but 15,000 pounds worth.
That’s nothing compared to what girl elephants go through.
Elephant sex lasts for two minutes or less—and then the guy elephant hangs around, making himself a pest for a couple days, asking if there’s a line on the test yet. Eventually, whether he gets an answer or not, he leaves the Mama-Elephant-to-be in peace and pregnancy for (are you ready for this?) nearly two years. Yep, 22 months later, Mama Elephant gives birth standing up, dropping her 250-pound calf on its head and shoulders.
Welcome to the world, Big Guy.
Elephants and sperm whales have the longest pregnancies in the animal kingdoms, both at well over or close to 600 days. Compare that to the hamster you had as a kid, which had a gestation of as little as 16 days; or a mouse that experiences 19-21 days’ pregnancy before giving birth to an average of six to 10 pups. And then she can do it all over again, so get this: if all their offspring live, one pair of mice can theoretically multiply to over 10,000 mice in a year. Clearly, there’s a reason there are just over 400,000 elephants in the world, and trillions of mice.
A Human Mama is probably glad she’s neither elephant nor mouse.
Generally speaking, the average healthy human pregnancy lasts 40 weeks, give or take (which, look at a calendar, is uncomfortably close to 10 months) and just over 96 percent of Human Mamas give birth to only one infant. That’s changing, though: instances of not just twins, but of triplets and quadruplets has increased over the past few decades, in part because of higher uses of fertility treatments.
Like her equine, bovine, and deer counterparts, Human Mama may find that moving around during labor decreases the pain. She may seek out others—especially those with white coats and stethoscopes—while furry mammals often give birth in secret, alone, before bringing their young back to the group.
In all of the above cases, and not counting early labor in Human Mama, it takes between 20 minutes and several hours of active labor for an infant to be born, with Human Mama generally on the longer end of that time frame. Another difference: horses, cows, and deer will lick their infants clean to stimulate them—something Human Mama doesn’t do. Scientists say they don’t know why, but it’s a safe bet that we can all come up with a few thousand reasons.
Welcome to the world, Little Guy.
Speaking of which, science believes that the reason a camel calf can walk a half-hour after being born but it takes a Human Baby almost two years is because we don’t have to escape predators. We are slow to walk, slow to run, slow to mature because of our big noggins which, by the way, also cause Human Mamas’ long labors.
What exquisite wonders we are. Now go hug a Mama. ▼
Terri Schlichenmeyer’s second book, The Big Book of American Facts, comes out this fall. Her first (Big Book of Facts) is available now in bookstores.
Photo:Paweldotio on Unsplash.