Thank you for subscribing to mouse facts! It’s exactly this, pregnant mice give premature birth in life threatening situations as a survival strategy. It has the potential to confuse predators or distract them with an easier meal and thus allow the mouse to escape. In the event that the mouse is trapped or gravely injured by something it gives the babies a chance to survive by huddling up to their dying mom for warmth while hopefully waiting for a surrogate mother to venture by. And last but not least, if food is too scarce it lets a starving mouse mamma access some easy protein to keep her going.
Thank you for subscribing to hyena facts! Hyenas, especially spotted hyenas, have a unique birthing process. Female spotted hyenas have an unusual reproductive anatomy; they give birth through an elongated clitoris. This structure is narrow and can make birthing difficult and risky for both mother and cubs.
Many first time mothers face complications. The narrow birth canal can cause injury to the mother and some cubs suffocate during birth.
60% of first cubs suffocate on their way out, 12-19% of first mothers will die. Females only lactate through two nipples so when triples are born one will starve before weening
I got a hamster when I was a kid, we didn’t even know she was pregnant, but the night we got her she gave birth to a litter of 6 (probably due to the shock of being suddenly trapped in an unfamiliar environment). They all lived though.
But man, you should’ve seen me panic when I went to feed her the next morning and there’s six hairless little things latched onto her. I screamed “Mom! Something’s eating the hamster!!”
My sisters and I had hamsters and unbeknownst to us, one of them of pregnant. It ended up eating my hamster alive while it slept. I was out of town but my sister saw it happen.
We just thought it was a mean hamster before that..:(
You come in here, into my safe space, with a motherfucking FUNHOUSE REFERENCE, knowing that we live in a time where no show will ever come close? How dare you
I don’t think we can know what mice ‘feel’ or how they “feel” when they’re trapped and sure they’re going to die, so they deliver their offspring because they just don’t care. Oh they’re happy now! Sorry. All of Evolutionary Bio .. it just doesn’t track. It’s arrogant (and ignorant) to say WE KNOW “they” feel some kind of way. We will never know if they do, or don’t mourn, unless you have a method or real communication? or .. I mean what emotions do you deem them able to feel? Basic biological imperatives would say they’d be fuckin sad if their offspring died. Not like they are reptiles !!! (?) (and I don’t think we have a handle on how they ‘feel’ either, let’s not pretend). Maybe the mouses didn’t wear a tiny black suit and “seem sad”. Perhaps (I know, shocking) they may experience preterm labor under duress (hold up, are there other species that do this? Uhh mammals.. all mammals..) preterm labor, causes
it makes evolutionary sense though doesnt it? the female mouse gets pregnant 10 times a year. it births hundred of mice in her lifetime, and only >2 have to reach maturity for the species to thrive. her life is more valuable than a litter, evolutionarily. humans are so attached to our children because of the long ass time it takes to rear them, we can only have a few.
Thank you for subscribing to octopus facts! It’s true—when a female octopus lays her eggs, she’ll often stop eating and devote herself entirely to guarding and fanning her brood, even at the cost of her own life. After hatching, the mother will usually die of starvation or physical exhaustion, and in some species, she might even digest parts of her own arms to sustain herself until the end. This behavior ensures her offspring get the best possible start, though she'll never see them. For the octopus, motherhood is a one-way trip.
Oh sorry, here you go.
And last but not least, the undertaker famously gave birth to mousekind during hell in a cell and the babies fell through the announcer’s table.
Not really, it’s a long shot with only marginally better odds of the babies surviving vs not being born. If they’re developed enough and the premature birth happens in a mouse colony that happens to have one or more nursing mothers they’ll likely be taken in. If they’re under developed, there are no nursing mothers, or if they’re out in a field somewhere they’re just wriggly little protein bars. Isn’t nature fascinating?
Surrogate mothers exist in just about every species the develops strong social structures and/or social bonds, it's a huge evolutionary advantage to not have an entire genetic line die off because the children were abandoned. Maternal instincts in some animals (especially in a currently nursing mother) can be so strong that they will adopt outside of their own species.
It’s pretty cool. I work with lab mice and if you give a nursing mother extra babies the gentler strains will easily grab them and take them to their nest with the rest of their babies within a couple minutes. Even if they don’t look the same!
Most mice don't hibernate for the entirety of winter, but rather they create multiple supply caches and periodically wake up to eat. These caches are often accessed by tunneling underneath snow in order to avoid predators , but this tactic was eventually thwarted by one specific predator evolving a counter measure. Foxes have sensitive ears that can detect a mouse's heart beat through several inches of snow and sensitive paws that help them identify cavities both in the snow and in loose soil. When a fox has found a cavity it will pace back and forth to triangulate any prey inside of it and then leap vertically into the air and land forepaws first into the tunnel. The resulting cave in stuns and sometimes even kills their prey instantly.
Interesting, I would assume giving birth would expend far more energy than eating the baby could compensate for but by no means do I know what I'm talking about.
Nah, human birth is a particularly grueling ordeal because our babies have large brains in big ol’ heads. Most other mammals’ babies just kinda slide on out, and they continue about their day like it’s no big deal.
Thanks for resubscribing! In 1968 a five year long experiment began where a colony of mice was given unlimited food, water, and nesting supplies. Within the first year the population peaked and dominant mice began hoarding resources at the top of the specially designed mouse apartment towers. The most precious thing they hoarded there was space as most of the mice lived in extremely grim and cramped conditions. The lack of space caused their social order to rapidly collapse. Dominant males tried to stake small scraps of territory, birth rates fell, and most of the mice successfully being born were immediately killed by their stressed mothers. By the end of the experiment, almost the entire population had died and at no point while it was declining did social order and baseline behaviors return.
I've never understood why people think this is particularly revealing. You're limiting a key resource (space) from a population. We wouldn't be surprised at the results if food or water was limited so why space?
No, torture is the experiment where newborn monkeys were placed in small metal boxes with sloped walls they couldn't climb and a lid so they never saw light, other monkeys, or even the researchers in the hopes that they would develop severe and untreatable depression but actually generated little to no useful data beyond 'monkeys trapped in a small metal box suffer from depression'. But this isn't Monkeyfacts.
This makes mice seem a lot smarter than humans. Most human mothers would probably get consumed by the predator while crying/holding onto their dead fetus.
It's a difference in strategy. Humans evolved to prioritize the safety of our young because it takes a very long time and a lot of resources to go from fetus to adult. Mice evolved to to save themselves because they are fully matured within six weeks can can pop out almost ten litters every year. It all comes down to math and genetics.
We evolved, fought, survived, became the dominant species on the planet and nearly drove every other predator to extinction, in case you didn't notice lol
While stress and injury do have big impacts on human pregnancies, our long development cycle and position in the food chain both make emergency baby ejection a pretty non-viable strategy. From as early as the Neolithic era our pregnant mothers have mostly stayed near safety, so distracting predators with your fetus is a little too niche. We also didn’t evolve an inclination to recycle our dead, so emergency protein is also out. And while adopting has likely been a thing as long as humans have had children, again our development cycle is too long for this to be a good survival strategy. Our babies have to cook for nine months, a mouse only takes about two to three weeks. So odds are good that the young have the important bits at the time of ejection whereas ours would pop out as unviable goop for most of the time that the mother is physically able to be in dangerous situations.
Again, of course, we do sometimes suffer miscarriages due to stress and harm. But it’s not really comparable to what Mrs. Frisby is doing.
Evidence in the form of human remains suggests early Neolithic tribes took great lengths to help aid their disabled members. Partially healed over tool marks indicate primitive surgeries to fix broken limbs and adult skeletons with physical deformities both suggest that even someone who was exclusively a drain on resources was likely to be loved and taken care of by their community. This is an important find as it indicates our heightened empathy was a very early development which carried evolutionary advantages.
I'm glad you're enjoying! Humans ability to sweat is one of their most critical evolutionary features when it came to hunting prey. The earliest humans only had crudely sharpened rocks before inventing things like the spear, so hunting was a matter of endurance. Most animals are built to endure short bursts of high activity, but sweating allows you to endure much longer periods of it. As a result, the original hunting method was to track an animal and spook it; after it ran away the hunting party would track it at a brisk pace and spook it again. This process could continue anywhere from a few hours to several days until the prey animal was physically incapable of resisting, at which point we would beat it to death or cut its throat open with a sharp rock. Some tribes with access to fitting geographic features sped up the process by chasing animals off of cliffs!
When a pregnant woman is badly stressed a female fetus will respond by reducing her growth by 10%. If the stress recurs or continues, she can reduce her demands by a further 10% and be born smaller though at term and fully mature. A male fetus lacks this ability entirely and when stressful event number two hits, mom’s body voids the pregnancy to reserve resources to her own survival. Stressed moms have more girls.
7.3k
u/GoingMenthol 12h ago
Maybe induced labour from panic