Why Having Twins is Rare in Humans?

How many rabbits does a rabbit give birth in one time? How many kittens does a cat give birth too in one time? The number of offspring in each birth for an organism cannot be too high or else it will consume so much energy from the mother and will also adversely affect the health and fitness of the offspring on the long term. The number of offspring in many organisms also is not too low, so that the organism can have enough offspring to propagate and expand. This is true in the animal kingdom and also in the plant kingdom when plants produce seeds for instance. Attempting to artificially increase the number of offspring per birth in animals or in plants may lead to adverse effects on the long term on the offspring or on the short term on the mother.

It would be interesting to explore how this pattern applies to humans when they produce twins, a single baby or not at all. In some cases humans may produce 3, 4, 5, 6 and up to 8 offspring at once! This would be interesting to examine in light of the above mentioned pattern.

Businesses Burning their Products

Some organisms reproduce only once before dying. Others reproduce multiple times within their lifespan. Those that reproduce only once before they die use all their resources and energy to reproduce. Others that reproduce multiple times within their lifetime only invest considerably lower energy and resources in reproducing.

In some situations, a company might 'burn' out one of its products in the market, getting enough cash to start other lines of business. This is similar in a way to the organisms that consumes all its energy in reproduction then dies.

What is the Maturity Age of Companies?

Individual organisms of the same species mature at different ages. The age at which an individual organism matures, reaches reproductive age, depends on many factors some of which are genetic in addition to availability of resources such as food.

Similarly, in the business world, companies can 'mature' at different ages. Some companies may take 10 years to reach the stage of maturity where it can confidently start spinning off franchises or opening up branches or going multinational. For other companies this period might be greatly reduced. One factor determining the maturity age of a company can, similar to living organisms, be the availability of resources for such company.

Low Survival, High Reproduction

When there is a low survival rate of offspring, organisms attempt to compensate for that by having a high rate of reproduction. Interestingly, in developing countries and many poor countries in Africa, you find very high reproductive rates and low survival rates at the same time. In contrast to that, developed countries that enjoy a high survival rate tend to move towards lower rates of reproduction.

Why Countryside Women did not Need Birth Control

The relationship between growth rate and reproduction ability is dependent on the habitat in which the organism lives. A habitat that is well suited for the needs of the organism and that provides plenty of the resources needed by that organism can maintain the growth of the organism without reducing its reproductive ability except slightly. In contrast, a habitat that does not provide enough resources needed by a specific organism, due to lack of resources or the presence of high competition on those resources, would cause growth rate of an organism to be affected considerably by it's reproduction.

In our modern days in industrialized countries and societies a high birth rate can have an adverse effect on the health of a person. A woman living in a modernized life style might have her health deteriorate if she gives birth to a large number of children. The reason behind this being that food prevalent today for such life style is not nourishing enough and is less nutritious. This mirrors the lack or reduction of enough resources in case of organisms inhabiting a specific habitat.

The above contrasts sharply with other women living in the countryside in the past where food was more nourishing and more nutritious. The high number of births women used to experience at that time did not have a strong negative effect on their health, actually many of them enjoyed great health. It might be argued that at such times the high number of births women experienced did in fact have a positive effect on their health!

Franchising as Reproduction

Organisms grow rapidly at the beginning of their lives and are unable to reproduce during that initial stage of their lives. When they reach maturity and are able to reproduce, their growth rate decreases sharply or even comes to a complete halt. This is true not only for animals but for plants as well.

A company that has been growing along the years may then decide to open up additional branches or even expand through offering franchises. The original branch might not be experiencing further growth at such stage but would have reached maturity and is able to 'reproduce'. This mirrors the natural process which we see in living organisms. However, there might be a different approach to starting a new business and offering franchises right away or planning to start many branches from day one. This would not be the natural method and might not always be successful or sustainable. Many businesses fail when attempting to start and 'reproduce' at the same time. Yet still, some do succeed, the reason behind their success is simply because those doing the planning for such 'new' business probably already have prior extensive business experience and thus are considered mature and able to start 'reproducing' new businesses.