It takes a lot of energy to grow a baby — just ask anyone who has been pregnant.
In a study published on Thursday in the journal Science, Australian researchers estimated that a human pregnancy demands almost 50,000 dietary calories over the course of nine months.
That’s the equivalent of about 50 pints of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream, and significantly more than the researchers expected.
Previous estimates were lower because scientists generally assumed that most of the energy involved in reproduction wound up stored in the fetus, which is relatively small.
But Dustin Marshall, an evolutionary biologist at Monash University, and his students have discovered that the energy stored in a human baby’s tissues accounts for only about 4 percent of the total energy costs of pregnancy.
Persons:
Jerry’s Cherry Garcia, Dustin Marshall
Organizations:
Science, Monash University
Locations:
Ben