Mondo Knows Facts
Nine-banded armadillos almost always give birth to identical quadruplets
A single fertilized egg splits into four identical embryos every time.
Nine-banded armadillos exhibit obligate polyembryony, meaning a single egg cell fertilised during mating divides twice to form four genetically identical quadruplets of the same sex. They share a single placenta during embryonic development.
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Tags: armadillo, mammals, genetics
Nine-banded armadillos almost always give birth to identical quadruplets: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- A single fertilized egg splits into four identical embryos every time. The figure is taken from Encyclopædia Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
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- Yes. It sits on the Animals shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
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