Surprisingly there are many animals that have babies more than once a year.

Whether or not an animal can have babies more than once a year often comes down to the conditions where that animal lives.  It is possible if the animal has an abundant food source and the environmental conditions are right, which means the weather is not too hot or cold for babies to be survive.

Ultimately, like everything for animals, whether or not an animal has babies more than once a year comes down to a question of survival.  Animals will do all that they can to ensure that they survive by passing on their genes to their babies.  This means that animals will have babies as frequently as they can as long as those babies have a reasonably good chance of surviving.

The Larger the Animal the Longer it Takes to Grow a Baby

In general it takes larger animals a longer period of time to grow a baby in their body.  For example, it takes elephants about 640 days, humans about 266 days, baboons 187 days, dog 60 days, rabbits 33 days, and mice only 20 days.

This has a strong influence on how many times an animal can have babies in a year.  If it takes 9 months (for humans) to grow a baby then it is impossible to have babies more than once in a year.  But, for mice, it only takes 20 days to grow a baby, so they can have babies more than once in a year.

This means that there are many kinds of animals that have babies more than once a year, but they are all small.  It takes too long for large animals to grow babies for them to have babies more than once a year.

Here are just some animals that have babies more than once a year:

Rabbits – have always been known as an animal that reproduces a lot and has lots of babies.  In areas that have a cold winter rabbits can have two litters in a season.  But, in areas that stay warm year round (such as Australia and New Zealand), they can have up to 7 litters in a season!

Squirrels – squirrels have two litters a year, once in early spring and once in the fall.

Mice – mice mothers can have a litter of six mice once a month.

Ants – In ant colonies there are different kinds of ants that have different roles in the colony.  The queen ant’s role is to make babies.  She spends all year long, or summer in areas that have cold winters, making babies.

Robins – It is not uncommon for Robins to have babies two or three times in a year.  The parents will stay with the newborn birds for a few weeks, then it often becomes the dad’s duty as the mom begins to prepare herself for another pregnancy.