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How is a dolphin born? “Water birth is just the beginning of trouble”.

Article bay
4 min readMay 1, 2023

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For us it is a “natural” method, gentle for the baby and relatively comfortable for the mother. For dolphins, it’s a big challenge. How to give birth to an offspring underwater without risking drowning it?

[Photo: StockSnap from Pixabay]

There are, of course, plenty of differences between humans and animals. You can read about how animals give birth here. In the case of cetaceans, however, one thing immediately strikes you during childbirth. Babies are born head forward. Other positioning means complications, requiring the intervention of a doctor.

Baby dolphins, on the other hand, stick out their tails first. The reason is simple. If they were born as we are, they could choke on water and die before the birth action is over. And it can last as long as 3–4 hours. However, scientists still do not know how the cetaceans “came up with” this unusual idea. How does a dolphin give birth? Certainly in an unusual way.

How is a dolphin born?

It is certain, however, that they did not succeed immediately. This is proven by an exquisitely preserved fossil from 47.5 million years ago, discovered in Pakistan by scientists from the University of Michigan.

“I first saw the teeth and thought we were dealing with a small adult cetacean. As the find was…

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Article bay
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