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The Differences Between Mammals

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Submitted By evokouma
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Eve Vokouma
Biology 1108K-14
Professor: Mark Schlueter
30 April 2015

The differences Between Mammals

Mammal is the common name given to organisms that belong to class Mammalia. All mammals are tetrapods (four feet) and possess hair all over their body, but the major feature that they have in common is their glands. Indeed, the mammary glands give to those animals the ability to produce milk in order to feed their babies, and this is were they name come from. There are three major groups of mammals, which are the monotremes, the marsupials, and the placental mammals. Even though they have some characteristics in common, they present many differences concerning their babies.
One Major Difference between mammal groups is their gestation cycle. In fact, if marsupials and placental mammals carry their babies in the womb, monotremes do not. Instead, monotremes make offspring by laying eggs. Those eggs are small and have a hard shell. A monotreme mother usually lays one to three eggs, which are placed in her pouch. The eggs are incubated and hatched outside of the mother’s body just like birds’ eggs. The incubation stage takes place for 12days and after, the babies break the eggs using a milk tooth. On the other hand, marsupials have a short gestation period, which varies from 8 to 43 days. Their gestation period is so short because they have a yolk-type placenta. This type of placenta isolates the embryo, so they do not receive nutriments from the mother. To put it in another way, the embryo does not get any food while being in the womb. At birth, a marsupial is a helpless embryo that will continue to develop in his mother pouch for weeks or even months. Finally, placental mammals, unlike marsupials, have long gestation period. This is so because their developing embryo is nourished using the mother blood supply. This feature leads placental mammals to give

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