How can human evolution adopt to the changes of multiple births being commonplace?
Mariam Nabatanzi Babirye is a woman in Uganda who has had 44 children in her life due to her bearing many children at one time. This unusual situation is because of a rare genetic abnormality that causes hyperovulation. In this fictional world, this is the norm rather than the exception. Women are likely to have multiple births of twins, triplets, etc, with single births being rare.
This situation comes with many consequences. Overpopulation would be a major issue in most parts of the world. In addition, every pregnancy is a risk to both mother and child before the modern world. In addition, there is another issue. Children who are multiples are usually born smaller than average in order to take up space in the womb. If multiple births become standard in the human race, evolution would find a way to adapt the body to accommodate this change. This would likely see a reduction in the pelvis, leading to a smaller birth canal. Our brains need to be large at birth in order to grow into the large adult brain. By shrinking the size of children, and therefore the size of the brain, it may have unforeseen consequences for us later.
How can this become sustainable without dying out after a few generations? How would the species adopt to this change?
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/170253. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
0 answers
0 comment threads