Offspring
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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In biology, offspring are the product of reproduction, a new organism produced by one or more parents.
Collective offspring may be known as a brood or progeny in a more general way. This can refer to a set of simultaneous offspring, such as the chicks hatched from one clutch of eggs, or to all the offspring, as with the honeybee.
Human offspring (descendants) are referred to as children (without reference to age, thus one can refer to a parent's "minor children" or "adult children"); male children are sons and female children are daughters. See kinship and descent.
The word "fetus" is derived from the Latin word for "offspring." In humans, the fetal stage begins eight weeks after conception, when all of the major organs have been formed.
See also
- Bateman's principle
- Clutch size
- Donor offspring
- Infanticide (zoology)
- Parent-offspring conflict
- Parental investment
