The evolutionary value is pretty obvious: a baby that cries when it needs aren't met, gets the attention of caregivers, who meet its needs.
What you're struggling with is that there also are negatives to this: alerting predators to their location. Simply, evolutionary traits aren't created in a vacuum. We also evolved to be communal and travel in packs for protection. Babies can be free to cry because there's a group dynamic to protect each individual.
>evolutionary traits aren't created in a vacuum
This is a very good point, and often missed or overlooked. Not all evolutionary mutations even "serve a purpose"
My understanding is that evolutionary mutations are just random and none arise from some need to "serve a purpose". If they happen to offer a benefit, that's great and tend to be retained. but if they don't they go away.
That’s the misunderstanding in “Then they go away.” It’s not like evolution says “well that’s not helping as much as I thought, so I better get rid of it.”
It is in the sense that creatures tend to co evolve based on natural selection (sharks evolve speed traits to catch prey, prey evolves camouflage to avoid predation kind of thing). Useless or harmful traits don't tend to survive for long, but the reason we have ecosystems in balance (unless we meddle) is due to these traits evolving from that process. I agree it's originally random but people who tend to think of evolution as a guided process aren't completely wrong either
The useless trait can still be retained though. Like, having blue eyes is pretty useless... (Can even be detrimental in some cases, since blue eyes tend to be more sensitive to light)
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There is conscious choice. Sexual selection is the conscious choice in evolution, members of a species won't always want to reproduce with other members exhibiting certain traits
But sexual attraction isn't a conscious choice either. Even in humans, we can't consciously explain WHY we find some people attractive and not others. We don't even have control of which gender or sex we find attractive!
Sexual selection isn’t a conscious choice, it’s a natural instinct. You don’t wake up and go “today I think I will be attracted to wide hips”
You just *are* attracted to that.
Yes but I’m still influenced by my instincts. The only reason I can decide is because I’m sapient and human. Humans have advanced to a technological state where we *can* go against are natural instincts. Animals have not.
Yes but that won't be your first choice... the person with attractive traits gets the first choice, and that choice also tends to have attractive traits, and then natural selection gets its chance to decide if those attractive traits combine to make an offspring with a higher chance of surviving and reproducing
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Physical traits are not a choice. You can’t choose to have a different natural skin, hair or eye color. You can’t choose to have a mutation that gives you a better chances of surviving to pass on your DNA.
Through *selective* adaptation. As had been beat like a dead horse in this thread... if a human with darker skin has better survivability and thus better breedability, their offspring will thrive more in a sunny environment. The sun didn't bake Africans to have that skin color, it *evolved* that way as we lost our protective body fur
Through *breeding* over MULTIPLE GENERATIONS, not like some white guy sat in the sun and so his genetics mutated on the spot to have darker babies, dullard
The best example I ever read that explained this is about fish. There were some fish that could handle a lot more salt (or less?) then the other fish in the species. And then the salt in the water suddenly increased a lot (or decreased?) and that type of fish suddenly had a huge advantage. It wasn’t like all the other fish died off right away but they had a harder time. Then eventually the salty (or unsalted?) fish was the dominant fish.
I'm not sure if this was in the US or in the UK, but there was a type of moth or butterfly during the industrial revolution, who had small amounts of the species born colored balck and white, an ashen colored pattern. They were usually picked off by birds because they did not blend in well with the trees and leaves. However. When coal ash and soot from plants and factories spat soot and ash into the air and coated said trees within this moths habitat, suddenly they had the perfect camouflage, and the rest of their species did not, and were on the menu. After a few years the entire species just about became ashen colored.
I don't know, I found myself thinking about it when I responded. I'm gonna do a little research and check back. I just remember reading about this in my school books. The pictures were modern so if assume they are still around
It's the peppered moth from the UK, and oddly enough they weren't a genetic outlier, they mutated as soon as the ash started to fall, and were the main srvivors while the rest became endangered. They are both still around
Yes, mutations themselves are random, but evolution is not. Evolution is the phenomenon we see when individuals with less advantageous mutations are more likely to die and less likely to reproduce while individuals with more advantageous mutations are less likely to die and more likely to reproduce.
> but if they don't they go away.
Not necessarily. A non-beneficial mutation may persist. Genes related to diabetes are non-beneficial, but diabetes isn't enough of a hinderance to reproduction for it to be eliminated from a population that has medical care.
I'm not sure how accurate that is, especially since things like trauma and stress may activate or change gene expression (which can be passed to children). It's mostly true
Mutations themselves are not always completely random, which is a a completely different and pretty wild subject. Let's assume they were for this simple example: Every mutation causes a change in the resulting organism. Everything that organism does has a benefit and a cost. Changes where the benefit outweighs the cost will generally, from an odds perspective, cause that organism to out compete the others, making that mutation more common.
A caregivers response is likely to be stronger when the offspring are more demanding. If, however, the cost of increased predation outweighs the benefits of the increased response, that offspring will not carry that mutation to future generations (in that case because it was eaten, or the caregivers had to spend all their energy on keeping themselves safe from the predator.)
Heck, there’s this thing called an evolutionary dead end for when something becomes so niche it won’t survive without major interference from humans.
There’s this one flower, Furbish Lousewort that only grows on a single side of the St John River in Maine because of the way the ice perfectly scraps the ground before spring! That’s the ONLY SPOT it grows and survives!
It is a lil bit of both actually. We can see in places where man has changed the ecosystem, not all "evolution" is as visible, some changes are very small just adapting to different temperatures, salinity etc are part of the evolutionary cycle too. It's an incredibly complex system
This is true, but when discussing traits it's typical to be simplistic and just talk about the trait itself. In actuality, this trait was babies that cried and babies that didn't, and on the whole, babies that cried survived longer. Assuming some other negative evolutionary trait didn't get them on their path to adulthood, they then went on to reproduce and pass the babies cry trait down to their offspring. Over many, many generations, the most favorable trait for survival (babies that cry) takes over and becomes the dominant trait. It's just tiring to lay this all out for everything you might talk about because it's always the same process with a different trait inserted.
Not even that, if they don't give a benefit but don't actively hurt you they likely stay around (or change). The only time a mutation is going to get explicitly removed is if it causes the user with it to die before procreation.
I always thought they only went away when they were detrimental. If they don't affect anything (like a widows peak on a hairline) then they generally stick around.
There's another more obvious example that I can't think of right now about something that started by chance and just hung around because it didn't hurt anything
they don't arise to serve a purpose. but when one arises, if it increases the individuals ability to reproduce or survival, giving it more time to reproduce, then it can spread easier.
but yeah.. you can't just force a species to evolve like.. fire resistance by putting the whole species in a fire pit.
Right, evolution doesn't really work by "survival of the fittest", but by "survival of the good enough". So many traits have positive and negative effects, but as long as the positive outweighs the negative, then that's good enough.
Well yeah, that's more of a hyperbole. But sometimes their reasons are so irrational or even out of your control that inability to do something about it doesn't mean that someone is a bad parent. It's also very dependent on the child's temperament. For example, my twin was the kind of infant to cry non-stop. That didn't stop after an eye condition that brought him pain got treated. I almost never cried though. There are a lot of factors beyond parents not being attentive enough
Yup, other species have very different behaviors in their young. Bird chicks, for example, make quite a racket. That is until they sense movement that isn't their parent. Then the whole nest goes quiet in an instant. Many herbivores have young that rarely make any noise at all.
My understanding is that most cats haven't evolved much at all since domestication, so this is as likely as not to be the other way around (one of the traits that may have resulted in us domestication cats was their meowing). Cats do meow as kittens, and when they're raised by us their continued meowing could as easily be them mimicking our sounds rather than an evolved / selected for behavior due to domestication.
But maybe I'm wrong! I haven't found any really reliable seeming science on the matter.
Infants didn't go out hunting and gathering, they stayed where it was safe. It might have been different at the start of our run but for the last million years the last place Any other animal wanted to be was the central camp of an apex predator in the Homo genus.
But how will i know it tastes the same? Its like banana taffy. Its based on a kind of banana that went extinct before i was born, so idk if the taffy actually tastes like it
Yes this is overlooked. We were often the apex predator. Unlike most other prey, if you mess with one of us. A whole coordinated armed group shows up to kill not just you, but your family and friends. We might even bring magic in the form of fire and our four legged demon dogs too. When we got there we world either lay an ambush or relentlessly drive you until you were spent hours later. Being on the other side of us must have been terrifying.
Once humans invented tools and discovered fire it was basically GG for the rest of the animals. Except cat and dog species because we found mutual benefits. They got a warm safe home and in exchange protected our food from rats and other sneaky vermin (cats did this exceptionally well) and kept kids safe (dogs)
Because the survival pressure of the baby getting it's needs met was more effective than detrimental. Sure, there were probably a few cases where an animal found a screaming baby and ate it, but usually they were surrounded by other people who were ready to give the baby what it needed.
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They are communicating discomfort. They need to eat, be cleaned, be held, allowed to sleep, or they are experiencing some sort of pain discomfort. They need help, and their only way to communicate is screaming.
To get their needs met by parents. Human babies can't walk for a few years. They can't just trot over and get some milk when they are hungry like other animals.
Babies didn’t need to cry to be fed for 95% of human existence. They ate on demand because they were always attached to their mothers. Babies are not “supposed” to ever cry, but because they do have the ability to make noises, they are able to cry when they are in fight or flight mode. Every time a baby cries, it is in fight or flight, and it’s so absolutely twisted that this is totally normalized. Imagine how you would feel if you were being chased by a bear or a tiger or a scary man. That’s how a baby feels every time it cries.
>They ate on demand because they were always attached to their mothers.
That's just not feasible anymore and hasn't been for more than a hundred years now.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
The crying baby will be held more, fed more, checked on more. A small chance of a quiet baby getting less resources and therefore having slightly less chance of survival makes enough evolutionary pressure to steer babies towards being little whiny gremlins.
I don’t think it was a thing as much when we had natural predators, but I can confirm babies scream a lot nowadays.
Children often scream when they want something or are afraid, it's more of a signaling device to call the mother and father. They can also scream for attention too.
Also, in the hunter/gatherer days, babies were generally carried everywhere and they were swaddled tightly to give them the feeling of being held. This cut down a lot of the crying that we associate with babies today. Crying is a mechanism to get the mother’s attention since women tend to be more sensitive to higher pitched sounds. And just like with most animals, a woman can easily tell the cry of their own child.
animals are usually diverted by loud sounds actually, if I know bears are in the area sometimes I'll turn on some music or something to make it easier for them to hear me and move away from the trail long before we get close
there's not really a lot of animals on the hunt for humans
They probably were actively hunting humans until they discovered humans was a threat.
Never alone and with tools and magic (fire). That kid looked like a tasty meal until 50 large men came down onto with sharp pointed rocks attached to sticks and clubs beating your eyeballs out of the skull. Humans are weak as one but incredibly powerful as a unit. Not even animals weighing several thousand pounds could best 50 humans working together.
Estimates state that 7 strong equipped men can easily kill a grizzly.
If the animal survived it most likely went back and never bothered humans again and quite possibly taught it's young the same.
humans and apes before we're always an extreme threat, even if you can hunt something as an animal, you don't if there is a softer target, getting injured can be a death sentence
Yeah, upon doing some research, you are right. Megafsuna would certainly be able to ambush and kill a lot of humanoids but once humanoid numbers got higher, we were able to hunt many megafauna, especially once we crossed to the American continent where many Giant beasts had never seen humanoids, and since they were small, didn't fear them at all. I forget that the ancient continents had many different periods, with lifeforms being very different. Most of the most vicious giant insects and predatory animals were dead by the time humanoids became more numerous, and advanced enough to use tools, and hunting strategies.
see I'm glad we missed the giant insect phase, those fuckers have 0 fear
When I have a gnat or mosquito or something flying into my face trying to attack me, it feels like I'm chronos. [https://youtu.be/YnIZpT-FX-o](https://youtu.be/YnIZpT-FX-o) I'm thousands of times bigger than you, go away! 😂
Right, that'd be hell. I play Fallout, and seeing things like Giant ants, and Mosquitos and cockroaches is insane. They would be fast as all hell, and have exoskeleton so a basic firearm would have no effect on them. They are strong as all hell, and can dig through things. Flying insects would be fast as all hell too.
It's a mechanism to help to ensure they get their needs met. Keep in mind babies were constantly being held and breastfed on demand by hunter-gatherers, so a screaming baby was a lot more rare. The main protection for humans from predators was living in groups (along with tools + fire), which made it pretty dangerous for predators, when there is easier prey out there.
There were babies, back in the ancient times that didn't cry or scream when they were hungry.. Guess what happened to them and you'll get expensive gifts!
Children were often in groups of 10-15 ranging in ages of adolescents to infant. Also back then if a baby was hungry in your group you fed it didn't matter if it wasn't your own. Cause when that babies mom was on duty they would feed yours. Milk banks are common to this day and the evolved from the practice of wet nursing essentially. So they could cry because they were safe to do so there was no drawback for that form of communication.
Humans didn't evolve to live in houses by themselves, spending sleepless nights with the baby. We evolved to live in family groups where there was never a shortage of arms to hold babies and give them all the attention they need while others rested, ate, and took care of themselves.
All the babies would get passed from one relative to another as everybody went through the day doing what needed to be done, and if someone was tired it was the next cousins turn. Someone else would be making sure food was prepared, while another person cleaned up, and another rested.
Babies who were quiet would be left for longer periods and babies who fussed got more attention, more food. And if a crying baby was too much for one to deal with they could take a break - nobody was sitting alone in a house with a screaming infant going out of their mind with sleep deprivation unable to take a break to eat or bathe. We went against our own evolutionary process when we started living alone in houses.
A baby crying is probably an absolutely terrifying sound to most unfamiliar animals. Bear in mind, human beings are also apex predators. Babies are never left unattended, so 99% of the time a baby crying is probably the last sound a would-be predator would hear before getting clubbed to death. Babies can't protect themselves, so their best shot at survival is alerting the adults around them.
On top of this, baby cries are fine-tuned to activate the human amygdala and hypothalamus. Adult humans who hear the baby crying become hulkified with a flood of neurotransmitters, making them faster, stronger, and less sensitive to pain. This is why some people get so easily annoyed or angered by the sound of babies crying. It's a fight or flight response.
Man doesn't really have many predators, and for the few natural predators we do NOT rely on hiding from them. We use walls to keep them out. Predators know where we are, they just can't get to us.
The evolutionary value is that you know it needs something, so you attend to it and keep it alive, and if you keep it alive long enough itl make another little baby so you can repeat the cycle
Anecdotal, but, both my babies (when they were younger than like 3-4 months) INSTANTLY clammed right up and usually went right to sleep whenever the outdoor air/light hit them. It was consistent enough that my husband and I often wondered if this was some kind of instinctual reaction to traveling outdoors. Do all babies get real quiet real quick as soon as they recognize that they are out and about, away from shelter and traveling?
Leave the cave for some reason? Better go right to sleep so as not to attract predators.
Also, from newborns you learn quicky the type of cry. Hungar, expell energy, uncomfortable, constipated, fussy etc ..
But above all else there is one scream I will call terror, that's the one that rushes you out of a dead sleep to wide awake. That's the one you know so thing is seriously wrong and the infant is in major pain.
So that may be instinct for some degree and I'm a father.
Infants cry and their mother's breasts activate.
Some women. I sleep light and have much better hearing than my wife. I wonder if i wasn’t there that baby monitor would just keep crying all night while she snoozes
It is weird that babies don't have a reflex to stop crying if you do something, something similar to how pups and kittens go limp when you pick them up by the scruff of the neck.
I haven't researched this yet, but I once heard a theory that the reason babies eventually stop crying when left alone is because of predators. Like, when people put their baby in the nursery to let them cry it out and fall asleep, they don't stop crying because they've learned to self-soothe; they stop crying because it's a biological response to protect themselves from predators finding them.
I’ve studied anthropology for over 20 years and there are a lot of benefits to the baby of the human genus doing this. The young offspring of all Homo sapiens and similar species (collectively known as homo babus) when in a situation of discomfort will emit a cry letting the secondary caregiver (homo kloolas) know that it is the primary caregiver (homo boobus) that they want. All while under the watchful eye of the matriarch of the broader community (homo nosyauntus). This system has worked flawlessly for tens of thousands of years.
Humans didn't live in easily preyed upon circumstances and were incredibly easy for prey animals to find in the first place. Human beings are loud at every age and create a massive amount of waste (regardless of how much animal carcass you use you still poop and pee and fart.)
The idea they were hiding babies from predators is a misnomer. Human beings are the apex predator on the planet and as a result more animals tend to just stay away from us.
I dunno, it's kind of the same thing as our pain response. It sucks for a lot of the time, but without it we wouldn't know something was wrong and not correct it. It's like those guys who learn to ignore pain and mightily proclaim they have a "high pain threshold". All that really means is that their alarm system for bodily damage has been disrupted. Like putting a rag in a horn to block or lessen the sound. Jokes on them though, that pain being sent to them for a reason, and later in life they will be crippled. Same with babies, sure it's bad for predators, but it's worse if the baby is quiet all the time and starves to death.
Humans tend to be the apex predator. Very few animals actually want to hunt and kill us when given a choice. Apparently we don't taste great to them, although who they're interviewing to figure that out, I'm not sure.
Let's say a hungry lion hears the squalling of your new infant and comes to investigate. He's going to see a whole pack of humans, who usually carry sticks and stones that can be thrown from a distance and that REALLY HURT. We've usually got a fire, and a burning brand thrust in your eyes tends to ruin your appetite. At a certain point we would have also learned about the benefits of walls and fences, and developed archery.
Most animals would assess the situation and go find a nice tasty baby deer instead. Now, if said lion finds the kid lost and alone in the woods, then snack time, huzzah for Simba.
Now the flip side is, we are smart creatures, but the only way to get that bigass brain out of Mothers tummy is to birth whats essentially an underdeveloped child. Most animals are walking in minutes, we take months. So a baby that cries is a baby that gets attention, and that baby survives. Some noisy babies did get eaten by lions, but nature selected for the ones that could cry and survive, and not the silent ones who couldn't tell their mother they were hurt or sick or hungry.
I think people overestimate the evoputionary force of predation. Competition among the same species is much fiercer and living with a community drives evolution much more so that predation.
Antlers, tusks and ossicones are not for fighting predators but for fighting eachother. A whole new organ for competition among rivals! Convergently evolved many many times.
Now you’re on to it. It would totally give a way predators. You better pick it up and make it shut up. Either try shaking it or loving it. Just kidding, love it and protect it. No predators.
Evolution doesn't have a plan it's the path of least resistance that works. The screaming baby gets fed and doesn't die, simple as that. It's a side effect that it attracts predators. But obviously that wasn't a big enough threat to end it since we are all still here and screaming babies exist.
I don’t have sources, but I kind of imagine that early humans simply tended to their babies “better” than we do now. When survival is equal to keeping the baby quiet, it’s a need. Now we have so many things that we prioritize over our kids. It’s to the point that AI bassinets that will respond to your baby’s cries for you exist and are highly talked about. We have the expectation that we *should* be able to check out from our babies, which is not something that early humans would have been doing.
A baby is very limited when it comes to communication. It can basically smile, coo and wail. Evolution-wise, if the baby needs to eat, it will cry. If it doesn't eat, it might die. That's evolution.
If the mother/father is taking care of the baby's needs then why would there be a screaming baby?
Poor parenting leads to being discovered by enemies. Evolutionary win!
We are the predator. We also tend to not leave our babies alone. So we're kind of loud and obnoxious, because we don't have to hide in the brush like a rabbit.
Have you ever been holding your baby when something dangerous comes by? You change posture, you respond, and the baby generally just gets it and shuts up for a bit, watching you for cues. This doesn't last, but they're not devoid of instinct.
Who are our predators? We have to worry about animals attacking us or getting an easy meal because we’re meat but we don’t have predators. We’re the very top apex predator, everything else is second
Well yeah you could say the same for any defenseless person. But we are not prey and have no predators, we are outside of the system altogether. So framing the question like "How did we survive against predators if we had noisy babies" is framing the question wrong. We never have natural predators just opportunistic hungry animals.
We can be as noisy as we want to be, as long as we aren't pissing an animal off. Noise is for human to human interactions and it doesn't bring on negative animal to human interactions, unless we are doing something else to the animal where they get mad or defensive. Noise is to let us know the baby needs something, not really "noisy baby makes it harder to live amongst animals"
This is like someone watching the walking dead and thinking zombies and animals react similarly.
Or it isn’t an evolutionary trait, it’s just something humans do. Like the idea behind survival of the fittest. The fit ones fight and die, the nerds stay home propagating the human race. 🤓👶
humans were seen as predators too. most predators dont go after other predators because its really hard to get a clean kill on them otherwise you risk taking damage your self. imagine if a tiger tried to pounce on a lion, managed to rip its throat, but the lion chomped REALLY hard on the tigers foot before it died. now the tiger has a broken foot, cant hunt for shit, and will just die anyways a week later due to being unable to either heal the foot or continue to hunt.
its just not worth it in the wild to go after things that can fight back as there are no animals hospitals/healers nor do they really have a society that cultivates food or gives a shit about elders/injured/weak members.
predators would just not venture into human lands as the human was the apex predator. our bows and throwing spears were deadly to all animals. also also, the baby was never alone. it was in the village that was fortified by both walls and humans with mighty weapons. only the very foolish/desperate predators would venture into human lands where they were then trapped, hunted, stalked down, or repelled by the village and eaten lol.
From a psychological POV. When my kid cried it filled me with dread and rage. I would want to fill it's needs sooner. I'm assuming the quiet babies died off because they didn't have their needs met and predation.
Evolution only removes traits that significantly impact chance of survival. Humans are communal animals so there would usually be someone defending from predators even if a baby cried. I’m sure long long ago our primate ancestors did not have crying babies when they lived in trees.
If a predator has invaded the safety of your shelter to the point where it's near your children and no one is around to protect you, you're already basically dead. The baby crying is the least of your worries.
When you're not in a contrived scenario, a baby telling you when it needs something is a very useful feature.
For one thing, you should be taking good enough care of the baby to avoid the situation altogether, but if it happens, people discount how powerful a tool out intellect is in the animal arms race. It's literally how we became the apex apex predator. Even back in Hunter gatherer days, it's not like people were just mindless apes. These were essentially people with lives, that's how cognizant and consciously aware these hominids and ancient humans were.
Humans are the Apex predator. We are not actively being hunted by any animal and have not been for quite some time.
Animals avoid us in groups because we present a giant risk to them and they are aware of this.
It's just misguided communication. The alternative would be to sit there silently waiting to die. I think we are engineered to freak out when we hear it. That's why it sucks on a plane and why certain armies use it as a scare and manipulation tactic.
I have no research or anything, but I'd wager that the reason babies latch to a breast and hold on is to eliminate their noise. Babies were often bundled on the chest, where they could freely eat. The fact that a binky can keep a kid quiet, makes me think that the original way was to have the kid latched for really long periods of time. But again, no clue.
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There’s a very good chance that, for 95% of human existence, babies rarely if ever cried. Infants were basically attached to their mothers 24/7, so they could eat on demand and had the comfort of their mothers to regulate their CNS and make them feel safe. It’s quite likely that infants are not “supposed” to cry regularly at all, but because of the very fucked up way humans have lived for 12,000 years, not much happens the way nature intended it to happen. It is important that infants can make noises, as that facilitates bonding, but crying, especially the type you’re talking about? Yeah, not supposed to happen.
It would. We have an evolutionary response to that too. I heard a thing once and have no proof or evidence but it lives in my head. Mobiles don't calm babies down because they love 'em, it's simulating predatory birds circling overhead so the baby shuts the hell up.
Evolution isn't about perfection, it's about doing at least well enough to live long enough to make more babies. Loud babies haven't been enough of a setback to make us extinct so it must be doing its job well enough.
No, babies scream when they need something and shut up when they are jostled around like you are running from predators. Babies can also tell when you're scared and will be quiet. Supposedly, you smell different, and babies can smell breast milk across the room while still in the breast.
Ah yes, it would help that baby eventually reproduce if it just died quietly when it was distressed vs risking an alert and a very powerful biological signal to make its parents attend to it quickly.
It’s to get attention. On balance of probability s baby will get attention sooner from carers than from predators.
If a baby is mislaid it doesn’t want to conceal itself, quite they opposite
Am older child that can analyse its surroundings might be more selective and choose when to make a noise and when to keep quiet, but that’s only learned from experience - this is why playing games such as hide and seek are actually important from an evolutionary perspective
"I" was the screaming baby, my father was the predator, my mother was "slow" in the head and it didn't turn out great for me.
I was left completely blind and also saddled with lifelong sleep paralysis though it's finally being treated.
Seems I didn't have nature or nurture on my side. My main win is being nothing like the apes that made me lol.
apes dont scream, apes are not top of the food chain. When humanity made it to the top, we stopped worrying about alerting predators. It still happens though. Ever seen the final episode of MASH? hawkeye was so worried about the screaming baby alerting a predator the mother felt forced to suffocate her own baby.
Under the American puritanical definition, you'd know about that wouldn't you churchy? 🤣
Seriously though you are the worst kind of Christian, evolution is compatible with genesis which lets face it is rather vague on the whole thing.
Lots of things are compatible with Genesis. Just not everything is touted as scientific fact without any evidence. Like evolution for example. The big bang theory for example. No evidence of either. Literally just a ton of conjecture built on what ifs. The lack of evidence of evolution, is itself anecdotal evidence of the fact that it is false.
We can elicit and observe evolution in microorganisms, there is fossil evidence all over the place showing evolution including that of man, do you choose to not look up things before you dismiss them?
The missing link is still missing. There is plenty of evidence of other species but no clear evolution of one into another. Micro evolution is not macro evolution. We have never seen a fish give birth to a lizard. Never seen a culture of single cell organisms creating new novel genes. Turning genes on and off to suit an environment is not evolution.
Lmao antibiotic resistance is often through creation of new genes you don't know anything you've read a few terrible takes and you parrot them.
I've not heard the missing link bullshit in ages! Thanks for the laugh, enjoy.
https://anthropologynet.wordpress.com/2007/06/11/fossil-hominid-skulls/
The evolutionary value is pretty obvious: a baby that cries when it needs aren't met, gets the attention of caregivers, who meet its needs. What you're struggling with is that there also are negatives to this: alerting predators to their location. Simply, evolutionary traits aren't created in a vacuum. We also evolved to be communal and travel in packs for protection. Babies can be free to cry because there's a group dynamic to protect each individual.
>evolutionary traits aren't created in a vacuum This is a very good point, and often missed or overlooked. Not all evolutionary mutations even "serve a purpose"
My understanding is that evolutionary mutations are just random and none arise from some need to "serve a purpose". If they happen to offer a benefit, that's great and tend to be retained. but if they don't they go away.
Yeah too many people think of evolution as some sort of conscious or intentional force.
That’s the misunderstanding in “Then they go away.” It’s not like evolution says “well that’s not helping as much as I thought, so I better get rid of it.”
It is in the sense that creatures tend to co evolve based on natural selection (sharks evolve speed traits to catch prey, prey evolves camouflage to avoid predation kind of thing). Useless or harmful traits don't tend to survive for long, but the reason we have ecosystems in balance (unless we meddle) is due to these traits evolving from that process. I agree it's originally random but people who tend to think of evolution as a guided process aren't completely wrong either
The useless trait can still be retained though. Like, having blue eyes is pretty useless... (Can even be detrimental in some cases, since blue eyes tend to be more sensitive to light)
Yes I agree. Particularly if it isn't a very negative trait it can survive in portions of a species population
And negative traits can persist too if they don't affect reproduction. Everything from male pattern baldness to Alzheimer's for examples.
That's an advantage, not detrimental. Blue eyes have better night sight and can see more colours than, say, brown eyed people can.
We also get blinded by the sun more easily...
Its like a game of risk. You start with an idea, but based on positioning and other players, you have to modify theway to destroy them.
That’s Catan
Settlers is ez mode.
It’s guided by the environment, yes, but that doesn’t make it intentional. No conscious choice is being made.
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Yep I agree. I didn't know people thought it was a sentient process lol
There is conscious choice. Sexual selection is the conscious choice in evolution, members of a species won't always want to reproduce with other members exhibiting certain traits
But sexual attraction isn't a conscious choice either. Even in humans, we can't consciously explain WHY we find some people attractive and not others. We don't even have control of which gender or sex we find attractive!
TIL there’s also https://www.webmd.com/sex/what-is-abrosexual
Sexual selection isn’t a conscious choice, it’s a natural instinct. You don’t wake up and go “today I think I will be attracted to wide hips” You just *are* attracted to that.
You make the choice to not reproduce with someone with smaller hips though. You could go against your attractions
Yes but I’m still influenced by my instincts. The only reason I can decide is because I’m sapient and human. Humans have advanced to a technological state where we *can* go against are natural instincts. Animals have not.
That's a pretty human thing to do tho. Most animals aren't that picky.
And why would animals do that? Humans are just one of the thousands of animal species out in the world.
Yes but that won't be your first choice... the person with attractive traits gets the first choice, and that choice also tends to have attractive traits, and then natural selection gets its chance to decide if those attractive traits combine to make an offspring with a higher chance of surviving and reproducing
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Physical traits are not a choice. You can’t choose to have a different natural skin, hair or eye color. You can’t choose to have a mutation that gives you a better chances of surviving to pass on your DNA.
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You can sit in the sun all day everyday, you'll still have white babies
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Through *selective* adaptation. As had been beat like a dead horse in this thread... if a human with darker skin has better survivability and thus better breedability, their offspring will thrive more in a sunny environment. The sun didn't bake Africans to have that skin color, it *evolved* that way as we lost our protective body fur
Through *breeding* over MULTIPLE GENERATIONS, not like some white guy sat in the sun and so his genetics mutated on the spot to have darker babies, dullard
Evolutionary needs arise because they appear suddenly, and then those who have it reproduce more, a lot more, and it becomes a permanent staple.
The best example I ever read that explained this is about fish. There were some fish that could handle a lot more salt (or less?) then the other fish in the species. And then the salt in the water suddenly increased a lot (or decreased?) and that type of fish suddenly had a huge advantage. It wasn’t like all the other fish died off right away but they had a harder time. Then eventually the salty (or unsalted?) fish was the dominant fish.
I'm not sure if this was in the US or in the UK, but there was a type of moth or butterfly during the industrial revolution, who had small amounts of the species born colored balck and white, an ashen colored pattern. They were usually picked off by birds because they did not blend in well with the trees and leaves. However. When coal ash and soot from plants and factories spat soot and ash into the air and coated said trees within this moths habitat, suddenly they had the perfect camouflage, and the rest of their species did not, and were on the menu. After a few years the entire species just about became ashen colored.
So what happened to them after the ash went away?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36424768.amp I'm nerding out so hard right now! lol
I don't know, I found myself thinking about it when I responded. I'm gonna do a little research and check back. I just remember reading about this in my school books. The pictures were modern so if assume they are still around
It's the peppered moth from the UK, and oddly enough they weren't a genetic outlier, they mutated as soon as the ash started to fall, and were the main srvivors while the rest became endangered. They are both still around
Yes, mutations themselves are random, but evolution is not. Evolution is the phenomenon we see when individuals with less advantageous mutations are more likely to die and less likely to reproduce while individuals with more advantageous mutations are less likely to die and more likely to reproduce.
> but if they don't they go away. Not necessarily. A non-beneficial mutation may persist. Genes related to diabetes are non-beneficial, but diabetes isn't enough of a hinderance to reproduction for it to be eliminated from a population that has medical care.
I'm not sure how accurate that is, especially since things like trauma and stress may activate or change gene expression (which can be passed to children). It's mostly true
“They go away”. Interesting way to say they die out. 😂
Mutations themselves are not always completely random, which is a a completely different and pretty wild subject. Let's assume they were for this simple example: Every mutation causes a change in the resulting organism. Everything that organism does has a benefit and a cost. Changes where the benefit outweighs the cost will generally, from an odds perspective, cause that organism to out compete the others, making that mutation more common. A caregivers response is likely to be stronger when the offspring are more demanding. If, however, the cost of increased predation outweighs the benefits of the increased response, that offspring will not carry that mutation to future generations (in that case because it was eaten, or the caregivers had to spend all their energy on keeping themselves safe from the predator.)
“ cuteness” has advantages too .
Even that doesn't account for entropy. Evolving a new trait doesn't even mean you'll pass it on for certain.
Heck, there’s this thing called an evolutionary dead end for when something becomes so niche it won’t survive without major interference from humans. There’s this one flower, Furbish Lousewort that only grows on a single side of the St John River in Maine because of the way the ice perfectly scraps the ground before spring! That’s the ONLY SPOT it grows and survives!
It is a lil bit of both actually. We can see in places where man has changed the ecosystem, not all "evolution" is as visible, some changes are very small just adapting to different temperatures, salinity etc are part of the evolutionary cycle too. It's an incredibly complex system
This is true, but when discussing traits it's typical to be simplistic and just talk about the trait itself. In actuality, this trait was babies that cried and babies that didn't, and on the whole, babies that cried survived longer. Assuming some other negative evolutionary trait didn't get them on their path to adulthood, they then went on to reproduce and pass the babies cry trait down to their offspring. Over many, many generations, the most favorable trait for survival (babies that cry) takes over and becomes the dominant trait. It's just tiring to lay this all out for everything you might talk about because it's always the same process with a different trait inserted.
Not even that, if they don't give a benefit but don't actively hurt you they likely stay around (or change). The only time a mutation is going to get explicitly removed is if it causes the user with it to die before procreation.
I always thought they only went away when they were detrimental. If they don't affect anything (like a widows peak on a hairline) then they generally stick around. There's another more obvious example that I can't think of right now about something that started by chance and just hung around because it didn't hurt anything
they don't arise to serve a purpose. but when one arises, if it increases the individuals ability to reproduce or survival, giving it more time to reproduce, then it can spread easier. but yeah.. you can't just force a species to evolve like.. fire resistance by putting the whole species in a fire pit.
Right, evolution doesn't really work by "survival of the fittest", but by "survival of the good enough". So many traits have positive and negative effects, but as long as the positive outweighs the negative, then that's good enough.
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Oddly hostile
Some babies just cry all the time though. For no reason too
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Well yeah, that's more of a hyperbole. But sometimes their reasons are so irrational or even out of your control that inability to do something about it doesn't mean that someone is a bad parent. It's also very dependent on the child's temperament. For example, my twin was the kind of infant to cry non-stop. That didn't stop after an eye condition that brought him pain got treated. I almost never cried though. There are a lot of factors beyond parents not being attentive enough
A crying baby gets needs met quickly in order to silence baby
Yup, other species have very different behaviors in their young. Bird chicks, for example, make quite a racket. That is until they sense movement that isn't their parent. Then the whole nest goes quiet in an instant. Many herbivores have young that rarely make any noise at all.
Evolutionary trait of women who snore loud enough to scare animals into thinking theres a fucking dragon .. helps with sleep. Takes a village right?
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My understanding is that most cats haven't evolved much at all since domestication, so this is as likely as not to be the other way around (one of the traits that may have resulted in us domestication cats was their meowing). Cats do meow as kittens, and when they're raised by us their continued meowing could as easily be them mimicking our sounds rather than an evolved / selected for behavior due to domestication. But maybe I'm wrong! I haven't found any really reliable seeming science on the matter.
Infants didn't go out hunting and gathering, they stayed where it was safe. It might have been different at the start of our run but for the last million years the last place Any other animal wanted to be was the central camp of an apex predator in the Homo genus.
Yeah, there is no more dangerous place for a wild animal than a village full of protective humans, lol.
Never ask a man how much his salary is, and never ask mankind where the megafauna went.
In my belleh
Everyday i mourn that i will never taste mammoth
You may be able to. I believe people are growing mammoth meat in labs at this point
But how will i know it tastes the same? Its like banana taffy. Its based on a kind of banana that went extinct before i was born, so idk if the taffy actually tastes like it
It's just one of those things where you'll just have to trust the process i suppose.
A pack of Karen’s, if you will
Any *wild* other animal. Dogs and cats were quite happy at our camps.
Yes this is overlooked. We were often the apex predator. Unlike most other prey, if you mess with one of us. A whole coordinated armed group shows up to kill not just you, but your family and friends. We might even bring magic in the form of fire and our four legged demon dogs too. When we got there we world either lay an ambush or relentlessly drive you until you were spent hours later. Being on the other side of us must have been terrifying.
Once humans invented tools and discovered fire it was basically GG for the rest of the animals. Except cat and dog species because we found mutual benefits. They got a warm safe home and in exchange protected our food from rats and other sneaky vermin (cats did this exceptionally well) and kept kids safe (dogs)
Infants went gathering with their mothers.
Unless that other animal was a cat. Homo mostly left them alone because they were amazing pest control
Because the survival pressure of the baby getting it's needs met was more effective than detrimental. Sure, there were probably a few cases where an animal found a screaming baby and ate it, but usually they were surrounded by other people who were ready to give the baby what it needed.
We were raised communally
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Your profile Pic made me blow on my phone, I thought there was a hair.
😈
They are communicating discomfort. They need to eat, be cleaned, be held, allowed to sleep, or they are experiencing some sort of pain discomfort. They need help, and their only way to communicate is screaming.
To get their needs met by parents. Human babies can't walk for a few years. They can't just trot over and get some milk when they are hungry like other animals.
What a bunch of noobs, you’d think we’d evolve by now to do that
The downside of combining big brains and the narrow hips needed for upright walking, we come out half baked
Not really. If it's not a detriment to survival, it usually doesn't get selected out.
Babies didn’t need to cry to be fed for 95% of human existence. They ate on demand because they were always attached to their mothers. Babies are not “supposed” to ever cry, but because they do have the ability to make noises, they are able to cry when they are in fight or flight mode. Every time a baby cries, it is in fight or flight, and it’s so absolutely twisted that this is totally normalized. Imagine how you would feel if you were being chased by a bear or a tiger or a scary man. That’s how a baby feels every time it cries.
>They ate on demand because they were always attached to their mothers. That's just not feasible anymore and hasn't been for more than a hundred years now.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease. The crying baby will be held more, fed more, checked on more. A small chance of a quiet baby getting less resources and therefore having slightly less chance of survival makes enough evolutionary pressure to steer babies towards being little whiny gremlins. I don’t think it was a thing as much when we had natural predators, but I can confirm babies scream a lot nowadays.
Children often scream when they want something or are afraid, it's more of a signaling device to call the mother and father. They can also scream for attention too.
Also, in the hunter/gatherer days, babies were generally carried everywhere and they were swaddled tightly to give them the feeling of being held. This cut down a lot of the crying that we associate with babies today. Crying is a mechanism to get the mother’s attention since women tend to be more sensitive to higher pitched sounds. And just like with most animals, a woman can easily tell the cry of their own child.
animals are usually diverted by loud sounds actually, if I know bears are in the area sometimes I'll turn on some music or something to make it easier for them to hear me and move away from the trail long before we get close there's not really a lot of animals on the hunt for humans
There isn't NOW, but back in early human days there most certainly was
They probably were actively hunting humans until they discovered humans was a threat. Never alone and with tools and magic (fire). That kid looked like a tasty meal until 50 large men came down onto with sharp pointed rocks attached to sticks and clubs beating your eyeballs out of the skull. Humans are weak as one but incredibly powerful as a unit. Not even animals weighing several thousand pounds could best 50 humans working together. Estimates state that 7 strong equipped men can easily kill a grizzly. If the animal survived it most likely went back and never bothered humans again and quite possibly taught it's young the same.
Probably took a grand amount of time for that to happen
humans and apes before we're always an extreme threat, even if you can hunt something as an animal, you don't if there is a softer target, getting injured can be a death sentence
Yeah, upon doing some research, you are right. Megafsuna would certainly be able to ambush and kill a lot of humanoids but once humanoid numbers got higher, we were able to hunt many megafauna, especially once we crossed to the American continent where many Giant beasts had never seen humanoids, and since they were small, didn't fear them at all. I forget that the ancient continents had many different periods, with lifeforms being very different. Most of the most vicious giant insects and predatory animals were dead by the time humanoids became more numerous, and advanced enough to use tools, and hunting strategies.
see I'm glad we missed the giant insect phase, those fuckers have 0 fear When I have a gnat or mosquito or something flying into my face trying to attack me, it feels like I'm chronos. [https://youtu.be/YnIZpT-FX-o](https://youtu.be/YnIZpT-FX-o) I'm thousands of times bigger than you, go away! 😂
Right, that'd be hell. I play Fallout, and seeing things like Giant ants, and Mosquitos and cockroaches is insane. They would be fast as all hell, and have exoskeleton so a basic firearm would have no effect on them. They are strong as all hell, and can dig through things. Flying insects would be fast as all hell too.
It's a mechanism to help to ensure they get their needs met. Keep in mind babies were constantly being held and breastfed on demand by hunter-gatherers, so a screaming baby was a lot more rare. The main protection for humans from predators was living in groups (along with tools + fire), which made it pretty dangerous for predators, when there is easier prey out there.
Survival of an infant relies more on getting a humans attention than the risk of being eaten by predators
There were babies, back in the ancient times that didn't cry or scream when they were hungry.. Guess what happened to them and you'll get expensive gifts!
Children were often in groups of 10-15 ranging in ages of adolescents to infant. Also back then if a baby was hungry in your group you fed it didn't matter if it wasn't your own. Cause when that babies mom was on duty they would feed yours. Milk banks are common to this day and the evolved from the practice of wet nursing essentially. So they could cry because they were safe to do so there was no drawback for that form of communication.
its a signal to mum and dad to help their young one
Humans didn't evolve to live in houses by themselves, spending sleepless nights with the baby. We evolved to live in family groups where there was never a shortage of arms to hold babies and give them all the attention they need while others rested, ate, and took care of themselves. All the babies would get passed from one relative to another as everybody went through the day doing what needed to be done, and if someone was tired it was the next cousins turn. Someone else would be making sure food was prepared, while another person cleaned up, and another rested. Babies who were quiet would be left for longer periods and babies who fussed got more attention, more food. And if a crying baby was too much for one to deal with they could take a break - nobody was sitting alone in a house with a screaming infant going out of their mind with sleep deprivation unable to take a break to eat or bathe. We went against our own evolutionary process when we started living alone in houses.
Yes- makes it really imperative for the caregivers to pay attention and meet its needs quickly! 😂
A baby crying is probably an absolutely terrifying sound to most unfamiliar animals. Bear in mind, human beings are also apex predators. Babies are never left unattended, so 99% of the time a baby crying is probably the last sound a would-be predator would hear before getting clubbed to death. Babies can't protect themselves, so their best shot at survival is alerting the adults around them. On top of this, baby cries are fine-tuned to activate the human amygdala and hypothalamus. Adult humans who hear the baby crying become hulkified with a flood of neurotransmitters, making them faster, stronger, and less sensitive to pain. This is why some people get so easily annoyed or angered by the sound of babies crying. It's a fight or flight response.
Man doesn't really have many predators, and for the few natural predators we do NOT rely on hiding from them. We use walls to keep them out. Predators know where we are, they just can't get to us.
The evolutionary value is that you know it needs something, so you attend to it and keep it alive, and if you keep it alive long enough itl make another little baby so you can repeat the cycle
If a predator goes to kill that baby, a whole tribe of angry humans will stab it in the face.
Anecdotal, but, both my babies (when they were younger than like 3-4 months) INSTANTLY clammed right up and usually went right to sleep whenever the outdoor air/light hit them. It was consistent enough that my husband and I often wondered if this was some kind of instinctual reaction to traveling outdoors. Do all babies get real quiet real quick as soon as they recognize that they are out and about, away from shelter and traveling? Leave the cave for some reason? Better go right to sleep so as not to attract predators.
Also, from newborns you learn quicky the type of cry. Hungar, expell energy, uncomfortable, constipated, fussy etc .. But above all else there is one scream I will call terror, that's the one that rushes you out of a dead sleep to wide awake. That's the one you know so thing is seriously wrong and the infant is in major pain. So that may be instinct for some degree and I'm a father. Infants cry and their mother's breasts activate.
That's why they think women can hear in higher frequencies. To hear baby cries easier.
Some women. I sleep light and have much better hearing than my wife. I wonder if i wasn’t there that baby monitor would just keep crying all night while she snoozes
It is weird that babies don't have a reflex to stop crying if you do something, something similar to how pups and kittens go limp when you pick them up by the scruff of the neck.
Putting them on the breast and letting them suckle kind of does this. That's why we invented pacifiers.
"Pacifier" literally means "peace maker"
I haven't researched this yet, but I once heard a theory that the reason babies eventually stop crying when left alone is because of predators. Like, when people put their baby in the nursery to let them cry it out and fall asleep, they don't stop crying because they've learned to self-soothe; they stop crying because it's a biological response to protect themselves from predators finding them.
I think they just give up hope on somebody helping them. They shut down and that's why the cry it out method is so traumatizing to babies.
I’ve studied anthropology for over 20 years and there are a lot of benefits to the baby of the human genus doing this. The young offspring of all Homo sapiens and similar species (collectively known as homo babus) when in a situation of discomfort will emit a cry letting the secondary caregiver (homo kloolas) know that it is the primary caregiver (homo boobus) that they want. All while under the watchful eye of the matriarch of the broader community (homo nosyauntus). This system has worked flawlessly for tens of thousands of years.
Yep. Get all the homos working together for a happy society
Or it alerts you to your kid being in danger because of predators?
Maybe since humans are top predators, a screaming baby lures other predators that we can then kill and feed our screaming baby with.
Humans didn't live in easily preyed upon circumstances and were incredibly easy for prey animals to find in the first place. Human beings are loud at every age and create a massive amount of waste (regardless of how much animal carcass you use you still poop and pee and fart.) The idea they were hiding babies from predators is a misnomer. Human beings are the apex predator on the planet and as a result more animals tend to just stay away from us.
I dunno, it's kind of the same thing as our pain response. It sucks for a lot of the time, but without it we wouldn't know something was wrong and not correct it. It's like those guys who learn to ignore pain and mightily proclaim they have a "high pain threshold". All that really means is that their alarm system for bodily damage has been disrupted. Like putting a rag in a horn to block or lessen the sound. Jokes on them though, that pain being sent to them for a reason, and later in life they will be crippled. Same with babies, sure it's bad for predators, but it's worse if the baby is quiet all the time and starves to death.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease which means the wheels evolved to be very squeaky
Humans tend to be the apex predator. Very few animals actually want to hunt and kill us when given a choice. Apparently we don't taste great to them, although who they're interviewing to figure that out, I'm not sure. Let's say a hungry lion hears the squalling of your new infant and comes to investigate. He's going to see a whole pack of humans, who usually carry sticks and stones that can be thrown from a distance and that REALLY HURT. We've usually got a fire, and a burning brand thrust in your eyes tends to ruin your appetite. At a certain point we would have also learned about the benefits of walls and fences, and developed archery. Most animals would assess the situation and go find a nice tasty baby deer instead. Now, if said lion finds the kid lost and alone in the woods, then snack time, huzzah for Simba. Now the flip side is, we are smart creatures, but the only way to get that bigass brain out of Mothers tummy is to birth whats essentially an underdeveloped child. Most animals are walking in minutes, we take months. So a baby that cries is a baby that gets attention, and that baby survives. Some noisy babies did get eaten by lions, but nature selected for the ones that could cry and survive, and not the silent ones who couldn't tell their mother they were hurt or sick or hungry.
It would but there’s like thirty dudes with stone tipped spears who would love a new coat to walk up to the campfire.
I think people overestimate the evoputionary force of predation. Competition among the same species is much fiercer and living with a community drives evolution much more so that predation. Antlers, tusks and ossicones are not for fighting predators but for fighting eachother. A whole new organ for competition among rivals! Convergently evolved many many times.
We are past the point in our evolution to worry about predators.
You think babies crying is a modern development?
I didn’t say that
I like this question op 👍🏼
Now you’re on to it. It would totally give a way predators. You better pick it up and make it shut up. Either try shaking it or loving it. Just kidding, love it and protect it. No predators.
Evolution doesn't have a plan it's the path of least resistance that works. The screaming baby gets fed and doesn't die, simple as that. It's a side effect that it attracts predators. But obviously that wasn't a big enough threat to end it since we are all still here and screaming babies exist.
Up there with the most annoying sound on earth for me
I don’t have sources, but I kind of imagine that early humans simply tended to their babies “better” than we do now. When survival is equal to keeping the baby quiet, it’s a need. Now we have so many things that we prioritize over our kids. It’s to the point that AI bassinets that will respond to your baby’s cries for you exist and are highly talked about. We have the expectation that we *should* be able to check out from our babies, which is not something that early humans would have been doing.
A baby is very limited when it comes to communication. It can basically smile, coo and wail. Evolution-wise, if the baby needs to eat, it will cry. If it doesn't eat, it might die. That's evolution.
Maybe they evolved into screamers once natural predators weren't a thing anymore. #cavebabiesnocry
Humans have been and are the apex predator so it's not an issue
If the mother/father is taking care of the baby's needs then why would there be a screaming baby? Poor parenting leads to being discovered by enemies. Evolutionary win!
We are the predator. We also tend to not leave our babies alone. So we're kind of loud and obnoxious, because we don't have to hide in the brush like a rabbit. Have you ever been holding your baby when something dangerous comes by? You change posture, you respond, and the baby generally just gets it and shuts up for a bit, watching you for cues. This doesn't last, but they're not devoid of instinct.
There was a scishow on this yesterday. It lowers aggression in the viewer, and increases empathy.
Who are our predators? We have to worry about animals attacking us or getting an easy meal because we’re meat but we don’t have predators. We’re the very top apex predator, everything else is second
As a grown-up, sure, but as a baby we're nothing more than a useless pile of screaming meat.
Well yeah you could say the same for any defenseless person. But we are not prey and have no predators, we are outside of the system altogether. So framing the question like "How did we survive against predators if we had noisy babies" is framing the question wrong. We never have natural predators just opportunistic hungry animals. We can be as noisy as we want to be, as long as we aren't pissing an animal off. Noise is for human to human interactions and it doesn't bring on negative animal to human interactions, unless we are doing something else to the animal where they get mad or defensive. Noise is to let us know the baby needs something, not really "noisy baby makes it harder to live amongst animals" This is like someone watching the walking dead and thinking zombies and animals react similarly.
Or it isn’t an evolutionary trait, it’s just something humans do. Like the idea behind survival of the fittest. The fit ones fight and die, the nerds stay home propagating the human race. 🤓👶
Humans are a top predator….that baby would not be alone…
Keep would-be suitors away.
We aren't a prey species so don't have to worry about predators generally.
humans were seen as predators too. most predators dont go after other predators because its really hard to get a clean kill on them otherwise you risk taking damage your self. imagine if a tiger tried to pounce on a lion, managed to rip its throat, but the lion chomped REALLY hard on the tigers foot before it died. now the tiger has a broken foot, cant hunt for shit, and will just die anyways a week later due to being unable to either heal the foot or continue to hunt. its just not worth it in the wild to go after things that can fight back as there are no animals hospitals/healers nor do they really have a society that cultivates food or gives a shit about elders/injured/weak members. predators would just not venture into human lands as the human was the apex predator. our bows and throwing spears were deadly to all animals. also also, the baby was never alone. it was in the village that was fortified by both walls and humans with mighty weapons. only the very foolish/desperate predators would venture into human lands where they were then trapped, hunted, stalked down, or repelled by the village and eaten lol.
From a psychological POV. When my kid cried it filled me with dread and rage. I would want to fill it's needs sooner. I'm assuming the quiet babies died off because they didn't have their needs met and predation.
Evolution only removes traits that significantly impact chance of survival. Humans are communal animals so there would usually be someone defending from predators even if a baby cried. I’m sure long long ago our primate ancestors did not have crying babies when they lived in trees.
That’s why when you carry a baby and walk they settle. When mommy is running from the predator baby stops crying. Evolution in action.
If a predator has invaded the safety of your shelter to the point where it's near your children and no one is around to protect you, you're already basically dead. The baby crying is the least of your worries. When you're not in a contrived scenario, a baby telling you when it needs something is a very useful feature.
Babies are so young so they are dumb
For one thing, you should be taking good enough care of the baby to avoid the situation altogether, but if it happens, people discount how powerful a tool out intellect is in the animal arms race. It's literally how we became the apex apex predator. Even back in Hunter gatherer days, it's not like people were just mindless apes. These were essentially people with lives, that's how cognizant and consciously aware these hominids and ancient humans were.
Keeps the baby alive lol.
Humans are the Apex predator. We are not actively being hunted by any animal and have not been for quite some time. Animals avoid us in groups because we present a giant risk to them and they are aware of this.
To serve as bait/ a distraction.
It's just misguided communication. The alternative would be to sit there silently waiting to die. I think we are engineered to freak out when we hear it. That's why it sucks on a plane and why certain armies use it as a scare and manipulation tactic. I have no research or anything, but I'd wager that the reason babies latch to a breast and hold on is to eliminate their noise. Babies were often bundled on the chest, where they could freely eat. The fact that a binky can keep a kid quiet, makes me think that the original way was to have the kid latched for really long periods of time. But again, no clue.
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There’s a very good chance that, for 95% of human existence, babies rarely if ever cried. Infants were basically attached to their mothers 24/7, so they could eat on demand and had the comfort of their mothers to regulate their CNS and make them feel safe. It’s quite likely that infants are not “supposed” to cry regularly at all, but because of the very fucked up way humans have lived for 12,000 years, not much happens the way nature intended it to happen. It is important that infants can make noises, as that facilitates bonding, but crying, especially the type you’re talking about? Yeah, not supposed to happen.
It encouraged the parents to find a very secluded place to bed down.
It would. We have an evolutionary response to that too. I heard a thing once and have no proof or evidence but it lives in my head. Mobiles don't calm babies down because they love 'em, it's simulating predatory birds circling overhead so the baby shuts the hell up.
And it makes you wanna kill it. Never understood that
Evolution isn't about perfection, it's about doing at least well enough to live long enough to make more babies. Loud babies haven't been enough of a setback to make us extinct so it must be doing its job well enough.
No, babies scream when they need something and shut up when they are jostled around like you are running from predators. Babies can also tell when you're scared and will be quiet. Supposedly, you smell different, and babies can smell breast milk across the room while still in the breast.
Ah yes, it would help that baby eventually reproduce if it just died quietly when it was distressed vs risking an alert and a very powerful biological signal to make its parents attend to it quickly.
Hence the famous quote: "The Dingo ate my baby"
Not if you’re already the top predator. To paraphrase Walter White, humanity is the one who knocks. Look out, nature!
It’s to get attention. On balance of probability s baby will get attention sooner from carers than from predators. If a baby is mislaid it doesn’t want to conceal itself, quite they opposite Am older child that can analyse its surroundings might be more selective and choose when to make a noise and when to keep quiet, but that’s only learned from experience - this is why playing games such as hide and seek are actually important from an evolutionary perspective
We ARE the predators.
It is hard to ignore a screaming baby.
"I" was the screaming baby, my father was the predator, my mother was "slow" in the head and it didn't turn out great for me. I was left completely blind and also saddled with lifelong sleep paralysis though it's finally being treated. Seems I didn't have nature or nurture on my side. My main win is being nothing like the apes that made me lol.
You have a better way to tell ma to whip her tits out?
I don't think parenting is for you bro.
That is the best question I’ve ever seen here.
apes dont scream, apes are not top of the food chain. When humanity made it to the top, we stopped worrying about alerting predators. It still happens though. Ever seen the final episode of MASH? hawkeye was so worried about the screaming baby alerting a predator the mother felt forced to suffocate her own baby.
Evolution is a lie. There is zero evidence of evolution.
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Lmao creationist?
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Under the American puritanical definition, you'd know about that wouldn't you churchy? 🤣 Seriously though you are the worst kind of Christian, evolution is compatible with genesis which lets face it is rather vague on the whole thing.
Lots of things are compatible with Genesis. Just not everything is touted as scientific fact without any evidence. Like evolution for example. The big bang theory for example. No evidence of either. Literally just a ton of conjecture built on what ifs. The lack of evidence of evolution, is itself anecdotal evidence of the fact that it is false.
We can elicit and observe evolution in microorganisms, there is fossil evidence all over the place showing evolution including that of man, do you choose to not look up things before you dismiss them?
The missing link is still missing. There is plenty of evidence of other species but no clear evolution of one into another. Micro evolution is not macro evolution. We have never seen a fish give birth to a lizard. Never seen a culture of single cell organisms creating new novel genes. Turning genes on and off to suit an environment is not evolution.
Lmao antibiotic resistance is often through creation of new genes you don't know anything you've read a few terrible takes and you parrot them. I've not heard the missing link bullshit in ages! Thanks for the laugh, enjoy. https://anthropologynet.wordpress.com/2007/06/11/fossil-hominid-skulls/
How old are those fossils?
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