See Which Animals Have the Most Enormous—and Tiniest—Babies
A giant panda mom is 900 times more massive than her baby, while a giraffe baby is one-tenth the size of its mom.
When the National Zoo’s giant panda Mei Xiang gave birth to a miniscule baby on August 23rd, it looked like the tiny, hairless infant just tumbled right out of her. A couple hours later, a second baby popped out.
Weighing in at just 86 grams and 138 grams, the two blind little cubs were dwarfed by their 238-pound mother—who weighed over a thousand times more than her smaller baby. (Learn why the smaller panda cub ultimately did not survive.)
The extreme tininess of these babies might seem unusual—panda mothers typically weigh 900 times more than their newborns, while human mothers are only around 20 times heavier than their babies. But in fact, mammals' infants come in a
