>DO WHALES OVERPRODUCE?
By that I suspect you mean over populate.
The limiting factor in the wild is food supply, called the carrying
capacity of the environment. If there is not enough food, young
calves do not survive, and in some cases, the females will not become
pregnant if their body senses a depressed environment.
In general, animals reproduce to slightly more than the carrying
capacity of the environment. This always keeps an expansion pressure
in favor of that species to expand its population providing there is
room to expand. This also provides food for predator species.
In the case of humans, we have removed nearly all predators of our
kind, reduced the impact of disease, and artifically enhanced the
food supply which all contributed to over population. We have
'overproduced.'
Cheers,
Pieter Folkens
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