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Q&A

Would female humans have more breasts if they had bigger litters?

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Let's suppose regular humans (same intelligence and pretty much same features) but they usually have 3-6 babies at a time.

To me, many breasts seem like an evolutionary disadvantage. Something you want to have as little of as possible, especially if you're a biped (they mess with the center of gravity).

The only advantages to have n breasts I see is:

  • It's quicker to feed your "litter", reducing your vulnerability/not-hunting time.
  • That you can be sure that, without requiring supervision on your behalf, at least n of your children will be regularly fed. It (usually?) happens that for puppies > n, some puppies will go undernourished.

But that's not a problem for an intelligent animal, is it? Time is not as important, because they are not as vulnerable while feeding (they have safe villages) and they have the sufficient organizational skills to make sure every child gets his fair share. This is why I think there would be an evolutionary advantage in having less. But I may be completely wrong!

So what do you think? Given a world were hominids (maybe all primates) have bigger litters, do you think they would have several (more than 2) breasts?

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This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/84974. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

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