Juvenile (organism)

A juvenile is an individual organism (especially an animal) that has not yet reached its adult form, sexual maturity or size.

Some organisms reach sexual maturity in a short metamorphosis, such as ecdysis in many insects and some other arthropods.

For others, the transition from juvenile to fully mature is a more prolonged process—puberty in humans and other species (like higher primates and whales), for example.

In vertebrates and some invertebrates (e.g. spiders), larval forms (e.g. tadpoles) are usually considered a development stage of their own, and "juvenile" refers to a post-larval stage that is not fully grown and not sexually mature.

Here, a "juvenile" is an individual in the time between hatching/birth/germination and reaching maturity.