Live Bearing vs. Egg-laying

[slaz@electriciti.com (Steven S. Lazarus)]

On 5/26/96 Jon Bois:

>2. Guarding a nest is less secure than carrying babies within an
>organism.  This is true for at least three reasons, a) A parent
>guarding a nets has two choices: stay and fight, risking injury and
>loss of nest, ; or abandon the nest to the predator.  On the other
>hand, an open-field live-bearer is just not a target for an
>offspring predator.  If they themselves are attacked they simply run
>away with their selves and their babies intactb)

Wouldn't being pregnant make it more difficult for the live-bearer to
"simply run away" from predators? Unless you're a herd of giant
sauropods, it's got to be more dangerous to be pregnant. An egg layer
may occasionally loose a nest or some eggs but wouldn't that be
preferrable to losing your life and your un-born offspring and your
future unborn off-spring if you had been able to run away instead of
waddle away?

S.S. Lazarus