Q.Which one of the following is oviparous?

Every kind of animal must, in the end, leave descendants, but they go about it in remarkably different ways. Comparing how animals reproduce is a bit like comparing how different families raise children — where the sexes lie, where fertilisation happens, whether the young are laid as eggs or born alive, and whether they arrive looking like miniature adults or must pass through a very different early form.

Across the animal kingdom, reproductive strategy is described using a few recurring contrasts:

• Sexes together or separate. In some animals a single individual carries both male and female reproductive organs. Sponges are hermaphrodite; flatworms, ctenophores, and earthworms and leeches (monoecious) also carry both sets. In others the sexes are separate individuals (dioecious) — as in roundworms, arthropods, echinoderms, and the vertebrates.
• Where fertilisation happens. Fertilisation may be internal, with sperm and egg meeting inside the body (as in sponges, flatworms, roundworms, reptiles, birds, and mammals), or external, with them meeting in the surrounding water (as in ctenophores, bony fishes, amphibians, and hemichordates).
• Egg-laying or live-bearing. Oviparous animals lay eggs (birds, most reptiles, most bony fishes), while viviparous animals give birth to live young — cartilaginous fishes are often viviparous, and mammals are viviparous with a few exceptions.
• Direct or indirect development. In direct development the young resemble the adult from the start. In indirect development the animal passes through a distinct larval stage before reaching the adult form — seen in sponges, ctenophores, molluscs, echinoderms, and amphibians. …