looks like the right one may be loafing, but also might be the runt. when my aunt's dog had puppies one was noticeably bigger than the rest and one was noticeably smaller than the rest. i don't think it's super unusual to have some size difference in a litter (assuming these are the same litter).
Babies grow off of nutrients drawn from the mother. Humans don't usually have runts because we don't usually have more than one baby at a time. One is abnormal for cats and dogs, which usually give birth to whole litters. Runts are fetuses that suffer deprivation of nutrients in utero, and so are born smaller and weaker than their siblings. In the wild, they usually just die, as they're unable to compete with their siblings for limited access to tit space. Sometimes, their mothers tip the scales on purpose so that the healthy babies don't have to worry about competition from a sibling that's already unlikely to survive.
Incidentally, that also makes them the easiest animals to tame: since their mothers typically just abandon or ignore them, humans don't have much trouble collecting and rearing runts, who grow up thinking of their human wetnurse as their real mother.
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u/roobot 1d ago
Why such different SMOL?