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ScienceHealthAmerican Births Hit a 32-Year Low
Americans are continuing to have fewer and fewer children, according to a new government report released this week. Slightly fewer than 3.8 million children were born in 2018, the report found—a 2 percent decrease from 2017, and the lowest total number of births seen in 32 years. The fertility rate among women also reached a … Continued
By Ed Cara -
Tech NewsHere’s The Truth About Eating Placenta
I’m not going to tell you what to do with your baby’s placenta after birth. If the doctor lets you have it, and you would like to encapsulate it, sauté it, or even ink it to make placenta prints, that is your decision to make. But you should at least know whether scientists have found … Continued
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Tech NewsSploidYou Can’t Unsee This Roach Giving Birth While Being Eaten by Ants
The circle of life is gross. It’s even grosser when you throw in a cockroach, larvae and some violently ravenous fire ants. This 18-minute video would seem to be for the true ant farming aficionado. That’s a lot of time to dedicate to the insane process of thousands of ants eating a live cockroach. It’s … Continued
By Rhett Jones -
ScienceBiologyWatch the Birth of Six Adorable Baby Scorpions
The video starts slow, just a magnified view of the belly of a female scorpion. Be patient. Something amazing is about to happen. Slowly, as you watch, she’ll push her first baby out of her genital opening into the embrace of her “birth basket”–made by flexing her front two pairs of legs. You’ll have time … Continued
By Diane Kelly -
ScienceBiologyHissing Cockroaches Hatch Right Out Of Their Mom’s Butt
I’ll bet you didn’t know that Madagascar hissing cockroaches (Gromphadorhina portentosa) brooded their babies inside their bodies. Now you do. It’s not exactly like pregnancy in a mammal like a cat or a human, where food and oxygen get passed from mother to developing young. In this species of cockroach, a mother puts her fertilized … Continued
By Diane Kelly -
ScienceBiology
Stunning underwater video by Jose Lachat at Aeon shows you major milestones in the life of an Australian flamboyant cuttlefish: including birth, courtship, and egg-laying before death. If you want to skip right to the sexy part, the mating dance starts at 2:19. Contact the author at [email protected].
By Diane Kelly -
Tech News
The Amazing Muscular Origami That Makes the Vagina So Stretchy
Human vaginas don’t have the fantastical loops and blind alleys of a duck vagina, but they still have some pretty amazing shape-changing powers. Here’s how they’re put together, and how that anatomy lets them grow when they need to. They certainly need to grow before they’re put to use. The average vagina is only about … Continued
By Diane Kelly -
ScienceBiology
“Virgin Births” Won’t Save The Smalltooth Sawfish From Extinction
The critically endangered smalltooth sawfish was recently found to be capable of asexual reproduction. It’s an exciting discovery for many reasons, but breathless claims by the media that sawfish could save their species from extinction by resorting to virgin births are wrong, wrong, wrong. Let’s explore why. For those who missed the news: A couple … Continued
By Diane Kelly -
Tech NewsSploidVideo: The breathtaking star-like beauty of a giant squid giving birth
If you ever wondered what a giant squid giving birth looks like (why would you think about that?), just look up at the night sky one day. Because watching a female squid lay eggs looks stunningly celestial. Watch as she lays thousands of eggs in the ocean that seem to glow underwater like she’s giving … Continued
By Casey Chan -
io9
Rare Images Of A Baby Born While Still Inside The Amniotic Sac
In what the delivery doctors at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles described as “a moment of awe,” a baby born at 26 weeks via cesarean section entered into the world while still completely wrapped in the amniotic sac. Warning: (fairly tame) medical images to follow. Immediately after the emergency c-section, the baby, Silas Philips, … Continued
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io9
13 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Human Birth
Everyone on Earth has been through it, but there’s a lot about birth that you’re probably unfamiliar with. Here’s thirteen facts about the human birthing process you may not have picked up in biology class. 13. In An Alternate Timeline, Birth Might Have Been Aided By Centrifugal Force In the 1960s, inventors Charlotte and George … Continued
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io9It’s a cub! Watch the National Zoo’s Giant Panda give birth
Get out the party hats, a giant panda has been born! Yesterday afternoon, Mei Xiang, one of the ursine residents of the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, gave birth to another little cub. Time to turn on the panda cam! The panda team saw Mei Xiang’s water break around 3:36pm ET yesterday, and at 5:32pm, she gave … Continued
By Lauren Davis -
io9What would happen if you were born in space?
Sex in space is one thing. But babies in space? Tonight at 7:08 ET, after 145 days in low-Earth orbit, astronauts Chris Hadfield, Tom Marshburn and Roman Romanenko will undock from the International Space Station aboard a Soyuz spacecraft destined for Earth’s surface. Their departure will bring the grand total of people in space from … Continued
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Tech News
New Moms Check In With Their Newborns On iPads To Start Surveillance Young
After a difficult birth, women are sometimes separated from their newborns because the babies are in the neonatal intensive care unit and the mothers are recovering elsewhere in the hospital. Cedars-Sinai in LA is providing iPads for “BabyTime“, though, so families can stay connected. Doctors at Cedars-Sinai estimate that 20 to 30 percent of mothers … Continued
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Tech News
Seeing Births and Deaths in Real Time in the US Is Morbidly Fascinating
If you want to remind yourself of the scarcity of life, just check out this visualization that shows the births and deaths in the United States of America in real time. It’s pretty insane to see just how many people’s lives change every second. You just never know. Check it out here. [Google Drive via … Continued
By Casey Chan -
io9
This adjustable chair let 18th-century women give birth in something approaching comfort
From the ancient times until the 1800s, many women gave birth with the aid of parturition chairs, specially designed seats that allowed women to sit upright or recline while giving birth. This particular chair had padded leather rests for the mother’s legs, but the parturition chairs came in a number of flavors. Some had extendable … Continued
By Lauren Davis -
Tech News
This Is What Child Birth Looks Like, From the Inside
Back in 2010, a team of German doctors announced that they’d recorded the world’s first MRI of a woman giving birth. Back then, only still images were available—but now the researchers have released the video, and it’s spellbinding. https://jezebel.com/groundbreaking-mri-shows-childbirth-from-the-inside-5708217 New Scientist explains how the video, which you can watch below, was acquired: The video captures … Continued
