Prof. Sam LawlerGood morning from baby goat land
This should be a meme: So many babies, so few teats (or something).
This mama goat, named Alice, is actually doing a fantastic job of feeding all 4 of her babies. She's the best goat!
Additional biology context, for those of you who don't often milk goats: goats regularly have 2-4 babies at once, but only have 2 teats. Cows almost always have single babies, but have 4 teats. WHY?!
(Does @dmacphee know?)
Alex 🔧🔮🌎🪿
@sundogplanets
Both are outliers (maybe due to domestication?). Normal amount of teats is 2x the average litter size.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.08.331983v1.full
BashStKid@sundogplanets @dmacphee
There are probably a lot of speculative explanations, but at least on the cow side I’d go with:
Modern cows may have been selected for reducing the number of calves in tandem with increased milk yield.
Calves are so demanding in terms of volume they rely on two teats as a baseline, so spares above two are good
Mastitis is prevalent enough that over the cow’s life it can expect to lose one or maybe two productive teats.
There are probably a lot of speculative explanations, but at least on the cow side I’d go with:
Modern cows may have been selected for reducing the number of calves in tandem with increased milk yield.
Calves are so demanding in terms of volume they rely on two teats as a baseline, so spares above two are good
Mastitis is prevalent enough that over the cow’s life it can expect to lose one or maybe two productive teats.
Starry@sundogplanets @dmacphee See I was going to go the Darwinism route and say maybe they have up to 4 babies, but their biology demands that only the strongest 2 fight and win a teat on which to survive, but then the cows having more than needed blows a hole in that theory. The result of domestication sounds more likely.
Eve, Go Listen to Dead Channel Sky@sundogplanets @dmacphee Goats are often able to get cows to babysit