• Question: why do only women have babies?

    Asked by fayeadamou to Pamela on 16 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Pamela Lithgow

      Pamela Lithgow answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      Hi fayeadamou,
      I think this in part is related to what we call a women/female! In nature mostly the female produces an egg which is fertilised by sperm from the male then the woman carries the fertilised egg until it becomes a baby and is born. So this process goes back along way into history and is how lots of animals replicate. It is called sexual reproduction and helps to increase variation as you get different “genes” from the male and the female. So over time the male things and female things needed to make a baby have come to be only in males or females! Although appartently there are fish that can swap gender if they need to!!!
      But I would also like to add that with seahorses although the female has the babies they are very tiny and the male takes them up and incubates them for a bit longer then he kinda gives birth to them too!
      Hope that helps
      Pam 🙂

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