R Breeding Strategies

There are two main breeding strategies that animals are classified into:
The r breeding strategy is the parent leaving their young to fend for themselves from birth. An example of this is the sea turtle, it is a polyandrous species, meaning that the female mates with more than male building up a sperm bank so that the female can produce more than one brood of eggs. They can have up to nine batches of eggs in a season with about two-hundred eggs in each batch. All of these eggs hatch off shore and have to fend for themselves to get into the sea. The turtles that survive will go back to the same spot when they are mature.
The K strategy is the other one, an example would be giraffes. They also reproduce sexually by internal fertilization. They are viviparous (giving birth to live young), and only give birth to one offspring per cycle, this makes the mother very protective to its young within the herd. Within the herd there are no dominant males.

This is called necking, where the male anchors itself to the ground and hit its opponent with its neck, the one who is still standing has the mate. Giraffes also have altruism behaviours, the males will fight off predators to protect the women and their young, these are mainly the older giraffes that do so.
Juveniles usually remain dependent on their mother for 12-18 months after birth. They are polygamous, males gain dominance by sparring. Sparring is when the 2 males stand rigid and attack with their necks, when one falls it walks away in