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Most of us have known (or at least suspected) for a while now that Flora is Pregnant , and im just curious, How long do Keidran carry their young? Humans carry for 9 months while Cats carry for 9 weeks. Could Keidran be the latter, or something in between, where Flora may have the child soon?

I poted something about this elsewhere ( http://2kinds.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4647&start=9 ), but was told i should probably start a new thread.

It'll be answered probably when the kid is born. Plus the fact that it's half breed would probably be affected it too.

It's only a matter of time.

Humans have a longer gestation period because human infants are more complex than other mammal's infants...I would assume, therefore, that seeing as Flora is the same size as a human and is alike in just about every other way but appearance and some animal instinct, that she'll be carrying the baby for around 9 months, as well.

I learned something new today, I didn't know animals gestation period was based on their complexity.

Well as i said when I told you to start your own thread about this "Tom will answer that soon" hopefully

PS did I miss the memo or something, or does Tom not post on Monday anymore?

It's just one of those days. Probably had something vital going on. It is getting into the crunch time of the American school semester. Goodness knows my classes are out to kill me. Then again, maybe he missed it because he was busy playing videogames and hanging out with Sage. Considering Tom didn't do any newspost about not updating Mondays anymore, I think we can safely say that missing this one was simply accidental. Or intentional but not malicious. Or possibly both intentional and malicious, but not a habit.

It is also based upon size. Remember, there are much more physically complex creatures than humans, we just happened to get the complexity in a very useful organ.

Yeah I'm not stupid after all. Oh I'm going to guess that the birth will be in next year in June (our time). The amount of time there don't have a clue.

Well, I mean, there are other variables than that...like Scalfin2000 said, size as well (though that was a lot of what I meant by "complexity"). Some people like to argue it's an evolutionary thing...gestation periods adjusted over time for newborns to be born during the most fruitful time of the year, etc....

However:
Elephants - 645 days
Mice - 20 days

The more complex the animal (i.e. "larger") the longer it takes.

Again, however:
Hippopotamus - 250 days
Otter - 270 days
Human - 266 days

I am no expert, by any means, but it seems to be a combination of size and brain complexity, or so.

How do you count w/ marsupials and monotremes?

For marsupials, there is the "gestation period" and then the...hmm...it's like, the "nursing period" or whatever....like with kangaroos, there's that time after it's born when the undeveloped joey (is that the right term?) attaches itself to a nipple and stays there until it's fully developed.

Monotremes...uh...no clue. Gestation period, then egg period? *shrug*

The gestation process first involves 'overproducing cells'. A great mass of cellular material is developed in the general area of where it is needed. Then, within that cellular material, the individual cells start to specialize. For instance, when the nervous system forms, only about 1 out of 10 or 1 out of 100 'nerve cells' actually become nerves. The rest die and are re-absorbed.

Sheer mass and quantity is not a big deal. Mass development can, potentially, be more or less an exponential function. However, larger creatures require longer nerves, more complex nervous systems, etc. The specialization and development of the complex structures which are needed to support larger creatures are what makes larger creatures take longer.

It does, for the most part, come down to complexity, yes.

Heh. They're not; that's just the usual human-centered doctrine claiming that, among other things, we're more complex than all those lesser creatures. We're not actually, except for one major organ that is a bit overdeveloped in our species. Other than that one big lump of nerve tissue, we're about the same complexity as any other mammal.

If you google for "gestation period", you'll find a lot on the topic. The main things correllated with gestation period are body size and stage of development at birth. Humans are one of the larger creatures in our world, which gives us a relatively long gestation period. Horses, rhinoceroses and elephants have even longer gestations.

OTOH, we are born somewhat prematurely, which decreases our gestation period a bit. The problem is our big skulls, combined with the biological accident that birth requires passing through a ring of bone. This is why human birth is so difficult; we're born at the latest stage in which our skulls can fit through that bony ring. Sometimes the fetus and mother don't coordinate this quite right, and they both die, or at least did before Caesarean delivery became practical. This put selection pressure on our ancestors for premature birth.

Anyway, if you look at the heads and hips of the keidran we've seen, they probably have similar problems. They're about our size, with heads and hips about the same size as ours, so you'd expect pregnancies about the same length. And similar birthing problems.

OTOH, in our world, the Carnivora do have gestation periods that are a bit shorter than what you'd expect from an animal their size. Lions and tigers have gestation periods around 100-120 days, less than half ours. If the keidran are like our cats, we can expect the same gestation for them.

But it's really all up to Tom. The model animals in our world give him a fair amount of leeway in such things. Keidran could be born even more immature than humans, with a longer nursing period. And for a human-keidran hybrid, anything from around 90 to 270 days would be credible. He'll pick a length that's good for the story line.

Another example is guinea pigs v. the other rodents. Guinea pigs have longer gestation periods and are born w/ open eyes, other rodents shorter and aren't.

Tiger gestation period is 103 days and human is 266. Since Flora is more human than tiger (I'm guessing don't start posting about how much Tiger she is, I don't care) plus Trace is human I'm going to say................................................................................... 206 days.