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@Background Pony #5C60

Either way, brains have to grow after the baby's out of the egg. You could argue that's impossible, and brains can only grow in a mammalian womb, and um, would probably have a point there.

It's the difference between eggs and live birth. The brain (or whatever) that would've grown big in the womb must grow to the same size, outside of the egg. Somehow.

@Background Pony #5C60
Mare gonna need a BIG ass

@skybrook
The thing about brains, at least mammalian brains, is that for a species to be really smart, like primate, tool user, abstract reasoning level smart, it seems like they have to be born with pretty big brains already, close to the size and complexity they'll be as adults. I am not sure why this is, but it's a pattern we see, at least with mammals. Searching for papers about it brings up things like this but glancing at it quickly, that one seems to be saying that humans evolved to be smart in order to take better care of human infants that are so very helpless at birth compared to foals that can walk within an hour after they're born, and so on. I am not sure how to interpret this. Maybe it's a primate thing. I know bears are pretty large and intelligent carnivores, and baby bears are really tiny hairless things the size of a potato.


@Wallbeige
It's still going to be a bigger package than babby alone. If you believe Wackypedia the only extant egg-laying mammals are the monotremes : echidnas, platypi, and their relatives. They seem to be a rather primitive branch of mammals, with lots of distinctive anatomical weirdness going on, suggesting they evolved in isolation for tens of millions of years. They are sufficiently weird that I am not sure we can use them to make assumptions about egg-laying ponies.

@Background Pony #5C60
or in this case egg bearing, yes still a foal IN the egg but

egg bearing hips. funny

@skybrook
so, pony egg would have to be just big enough for infant filly to fit inside, Aswell as enough room for filly to bash snoot into eggshell to escape?

@Wallbeige
@Background Pony #5C60

Egg laying animals have to grow a heck of a lot once they get out of the egg. It's necessary since the mother has to lay the whole incubation chamber not just the baby, and the egg can't get any bigger once it's out of her, so it puts a hard limit on a newborn's size.

So intelligent dinosaurs and oviviparous pegasusses would have to grow most of their brain after they're born.

Big ass is still good

@Wallbeige
Them foal bearin' hips, mmhmm.

@Background Pony #5C60
so mare needs a big ass?

@skybrook
If they're going to be intelligent, they have to be born with pretty big brains already. At least if we're talking about the norms of our world's mammalian biology. Note how different a woman's pelvis is from that of a lot of other mammals of similar size. Pegasi laying eggs and fuzzy pegasus chicks hatching and bumbling about making "peep peep peep" sounds are cute, but if we're going for that level of worldbuilding and trying that hard to make them plausible, biologically speaking pegasus mares would have to have a pelvis with a birth canal through the center that's as significantly larger than one a woman has. Consider an egg large enough to contain a human infant. I tell you what, dang ol' oviparous mammals gotta have a big ol' dang pelvis.

@skybrook
well, if a baby pone is born in real life its quite large, yes? would that apply to pony PONYS? if so wouldn't the egg needs to be bigger than a softball size?

Ponies are bigger than chickens though.

egg sized big, that big

How big would pegasus eggs be? Assuming the show height of about 3.5 feet, I think Deoinychus antirrhopus is about that size. Slightly smaller, so I'd guess the egg canal would be around 8cm for an egg laying creature of a pegasus's size. So I guess pegasus eggs would be maybe… roughly the size of a softball?