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This is Scientific Americans' 60-second Science. I'm Jason Goldman.

Human parents usually have one or sometimes two offspring at a time, and when babies get delivered,

we pour all our energy into child rearing. But other animals raise lots of babies at once,

and the weaker individuals can be at a big disadvantage. If there's not enough food, for example,

a mother bird might offer more to those chicks who are more likely to survive. Nature is a rough place.

But mammals like pigs can't selectively provision their offspring the way birds do because all the

babies nourish at the same time. And yet, the strongest piglets still seem to

have an edge. One hypothesis goes that the weaklings might not have enough energy to stimulate the

mammary gland while they suckle, so they eventually starve from a lack of nutrition. But it turns

out that vigorous stimulation of one mammary gland can increase blood flow in neighboring glands.

So if a weakling was canny enough to position himself next to one of his strongest siblings,

he might get more milk than positioned elsewhere.

I got this idea during observations of piglets, of course,

because I had a feeling that weaklings are doing

better in the company of strongest siblings.

Biologist Yonko Skok from Slovenia's University of Maribor.

To see if his hunch was right, Skok observed 18 litters, including 150 piglets.

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