Gestation Periods in Horses and Other Animals

Horses have a gestation period that lasts approximately 340 days. If that sounds like a long time to wait for the baby to be born, you’d be no better off raising llamas (350 days) or donkeys (365 days).

Among other types of livestock, cattle have pregnancies lasting about 280 to 290 days, depending on breed; sheep and goats give birth about 150 days after breeding; and pigs have their young after a pregnancy of only 114 days.

Some seal species give birth after 330 days, fairly similar to horses. Tapirs and rhinoceroses, moderately close relatives of equines, have even longer gestations. Tapirs have pregnancies of 440 days, while the African rhinoceros has a 480-day gestation. Large animals with much shorter gestation periods include tigers (103 days), reindeer (225 days), moose (240 days), and bison (270 days).  Those with considerably longer pregnancies are camels (410 days) and giraffes (425 days). Walruses and sperm whales have 440-day pregnancies, and elephants at 660 days are pregnant about twice as long as horses. Even though it’s an intriguing thought, this last fact is probably not actually the answer to the old joke: “Why do elephants have flat feet?”