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Post by mrsconfused on Dec 20, 2009 20:45:35 GMT -6
One of my close friends had a baby last week. As I was sitting there in the hospital room holding him, I thought of something that made me even more confused than I am now. How is it, that as humans, we are the only species (that I know of!) that have to take care of our children for many years since our children cannot survive alone. Watching nature shows, you see baby giraffes that are born, and 10 minutes later can walk. Same with almost every other animal I can think of. What makes us so special that it takes our children almost a year to walk, and almost 18 to finally be ready to be on their own? I know this might sound weird to some, but it's things like this that make me think we could be the result of some divine intervention. But then, I think about a million other things and I get confused again. What does everyone else think? I know there are people out there that will say, "Just look at the clouds, and the flowers! How can you not believe??" I guess that could apply here too, but it just doesn't work for some of us.
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Post by Laura on Dec 20, 2009 21:02:29 GMT -6
It's our brains. The size of our cerebral cortex (in proportion to our body size) is the largest of any animal in the world. Women's pelvises haven't evolved to accommodate the size of the head of a baby that would be as developed as other mammals. Therefore, we have to give birth sooner and care for it outside the womb. It's why we are social creatures, I've read. In more detail, Tina Cassidy (I think that's her name) wrote a book called "Birth" that is INCREDIBLY fascinating. I can't remember if she talks about this issue at length, but she does talk about how babies and pelvises and evolution. I highly recommend it!
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Post by linnea on Dec 20, 2009 23:51:51 GMT -6
If I remember right, walking upright has something to do with it too. If our pelvises were any wider, it would screw with the mechanics of walking. So we evolved big brains but couldn't evolve wider pelvises to deal with them.
Other primates (chimps, monkeys, gorillas, etc. - our closest non-human relatives, assuming you believe in evolution) are also relatively helpless at birth and slow to mature, just not quite so much as humans.
It's been about 30 years since I studied some of this stuff in college. As an anthropology major, I had a few courses that dealt with human evolution. The main idea I took away from it all is that we are not as unique as we like to think. We are "more this" or "more that" than other primates, but we're not some different class of being altogether. We're still animals.
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rosa
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Post by rosa on Dec 21, 2009 11:31:34 GMT -6
The other great apes have long babyhoods - chimpanzees are dependent for 2-3 years, less warlike primates even longer - orangutans stay "home" more than 5 years, well into adolescence, and bonobos are on the boob for 4+ years and often stay close to mom all their lives (bonobo society is mostly built on mother-child bonds, while chimps have more important male hierarchies.)
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Post by mrsconfused on Dec 21, 2009 19:26:50 GMT -6
Wow, I had no idea! Everything you've all said makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the extra food for thought! I'm the type of person that needs intelligent discussion, and I just haven't had that in my Christian life. I remember asking my Sunday school teacher in elementary school why the dinosaurs aren't in the Bible, and no one would ever acknowledge my questions. Thanks for acknowledging them now :-)
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rosa
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Post by rosa on Dec 21, 2009 21:05:55 GMT -6
You might like the book "Our Inner Ape" By Frans de Waal; he's interested in how humans make peace and he's studied chimpanzees and bonobos for 30 years. He's a sociologist and primatologist with Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University. I really loved the book, he talks about humans being under the same pressures as chimps and bonobos (having to share space and resources, define hierarchies, parent, teach, and protect children - he thinks protecting infants from male violence is the defining drive of primate mothers and talks about how chimps, bonobos, and humans do that in different ways.) My boyfriend didn't like it as much, he felt like it was anti male.
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Post by Kathryn on Dec 22, 2009 11:30:18 GMT -6
I have to say, ladies, I'm impressed. I teach ecology and evolution to college students, and here's a group of ex-fundies who are more up on their evolution than your average public-schooled biology major. Props to you for self-educating. The really weird thing about humans (as opposed to other primates) is our loooong adolescence. Gorillas are semi-dependent on their moms until they're about 5 or 6 (they can nurse sometimes until they're 4) and at about 6 or 7, they start reproducing. Most people think this is because humans are by far the most socially complex primate, and it takes a long time to learn how to thrive in that kind of environment. Only 'superbabies' will be successful adults, so parents invest a LOT in them. I've also heard the theory that the reason adolescents are so hard to deal with is that their biology is telling them they're adults, and their parents are trying to keep them kids for as long as possible in order to protect them. (Since teenagers die at much higher rates than young adults, and since your biological purpose to your parents is to give them grandkids, this kind of makes sense.) I haven't read de Waal's book, but that hypothesis doesn't seem to make much sense. Non-polygynous primate dads tend to be pretty involved in raising their offspring, so their parental investment is almost as high as the mom's, especially when the kid is a kid for 18 years. Also in non-polygynous animals, infanticide makes very little sense-- usually only polygynous animals like lions kill other males' young, because that increases the chance that they'll get to mate with the females. In humans, if you kill somebody's baby, you're not going to get to father her next baby. (This is also true in chimps and bonobos, because nobody knows who the baby's father is anyway.) In baboons, the whole troop (even unrelated males) are involved in protecting the babies-- baboon males spend most of their time fighting, but if you're holding a baby, nobody will attack you. But, I'm more of an E&E person than a primatologist, so I tend to see everything from that perspective. The other thing about helpless vs. advanced babies is that it doesn't have much to do with any one or two characteristics. Mice have really helpless babies-- their eyes don't even open for a couple weeks, but some shrews have babies who can run around right after they're born. Elephants are really social with big brains, so they stay with their mom for a long time, but they're born looking like a tiny adult. There are just so many factors that go into when you should give birth. Partly in humans and other primates, I think it's the need for fat. It makes sense to nurse for YEARS, because where else are you going to get fat from? Through most of our history, meat has been hard to get, and nuts are seasonal. So the longer you can mooch off your mom, the better off you are. Also, the longer you can feed your kid, the better of a brain it has, so it will be more likely to provide you with grandchildren. Sorry for the novel; this was the topic of a class I taught last week, and I think it's fascinating.
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Post by mrsconfused on Dec 22, 2009 19:47:20 GMT -6
I think also think it's fascinating. Thank you!
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Post by mrsconfused on Dec 22, 2009 19:48:42 GMT -6
Speaking of evolution, dinosaurs, apes, etc... Has anyone here been to the Creation Museum? I saw it on the Duggar's show and it kinda freaked me out. I'd like to know if anyone has seen it first hand
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Post by Laura on Dec 22, 2009 20:32:35 GMT -6
Wow, thank you, Kathryn! It's interesting you say that. I find that when it comes to basic science, I am usually BEHIND my peers at school. I really like it now, but I have such a weak foundation that I would probably need to take most classes twice in order to do well. (I did okay taking them one at a time and got overconfident this last semester and, well, we'll just say I didn't do well.) So if it's something I can absorb through a documentary or a nonfiction book (like "Birth") I get it. But actually taking the class, I'm afraid I would be like one of those students you're talking about. Learning creation science starting out really taught me to distrust it for a long time. It also is pretty boring when it's the same thing you get in Sunday school every week. mrsconfused--I haven't, but my parents have. And, weirdly enough, the guy that started me questioning and liberalizing my faith talked about what a blessing it was for him to visit the museum on Facebook. ?! Thanks a lot, dude, for ripping me out of my state of blissful ignorance just to re-embrace it yourself!
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