Interesting birth information
I was watching Animal Planet today. The show was talking about the world's most extreme births in the animal world. Apparently, the 9 banded armadillo always gives birth to identical quadruplets. In addition, the female 9 banded armadillo can choose to delay her pregnancy by up to three years. She can elect to prevent the embryo from implanting in her uterus if there is a drought or other environmental factor that could be detrimental to the life of her young.
Aphids, animals with some of the shortest life expectancies in the world, are virtually all female, and they are all born pregnant in the spring! Males of the species only "develop" later in the year during the summer. At this time, their sole purpose is to mate with the winged females who surived the summer. The autumn females lay the eggs which hatch the following spring - all female and all pregnant.
Interested in some information about the most prolific human breeders? What would you imagine the world record is for the most children mothered by one woman? If your guess is 69 children, you would be correct! That's right, between 1725 and 1765, one woman in Russia gave birth to 69 children - 16 sets of twins, 7 sets of triplets and 4 sets of quadruplets. The woman's first name is unknown, but she was the wife of Feodor Vassilyev.
The most prolific father of all time, you might not be surprised, was an emperor. By 1703 at the age of 57, the Sharifian Emperor of Morocco, Mulai Ismail fathered at least 352 daughters and 525 sons. By 1721, is is believed that he had over 700 sons, though the exact number is unknown.