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AlternativeBasket t1_ivbfgu9 wrote

Reply to comment by miasabine in TIL that most non-human primate infants actively use their hands to help themselves out of the birth canal. Human infants do not, but their grip strength is much higher during the hours immediately after they are born. by afeeney

human evolution was an arms race between bigger heads (smarter) and women's pelvises (being able to still walk )

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grumble11 t1_ivc49z6 wrote

Not just that, but calories - the brain takes up a huge chunk of calories during infancy, massively slowing development, requiring more calories and making kids more vulnerable to famine

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ledditlememefaceleme t1_ivd7iv3 wrote

And yet people insist we're magical and special because we're designed.

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Drmite t1_ivdgcsz wrote

When I was a kid still grappling with the whole religion thing, I just took it as the vibe being a set of parables to learn from. If a god exists, it's through the invisible visible sciences of physics, evolution and all that fun stuff.

Now it's good ol science.

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HolyNewGun t1_ive5zd1 wrote

Yes, precisely that a species with so much paradoxical feature like human should not exist. If human acquire bipedal first, then it should heavily select against big brain according to natural selection theory. But since natural selection pretty much attribute everything to randomness, the theory practically unfalsifiable.

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BoxingSoup t1_ive5vzj wrote

You just went through a whole thread on why we are special in design, and your takeaway was that we are not special?

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aldhibain t1_ivedten wrote

We are special in design, but we were not designed to be special.

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ledditlememefaceleme t1_ivgces6 wrote

We're neither designed, nor special. We may have some (A dwindling list) features unique to us, but that's it.

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crazyhadron t1_ive494i wrote

Nah, the bottleneck (heh) is the amount of energy a baby needs to survive within the womb. Birth happens when the placenta's throughput isn't enough to sustain the baby much longer, and it triggers the delivery process.

Kinda wonky to think that boobs are able to push much more nutrients through them than the placenta itself. Anywhere between 500-700kcals, that's as much as the brain itself uses and it's the most energy-intensive organ in the human body.

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Koshunae t1_ivdq1d2 wrote

If we developed medical science earlier and perfected cesarians then we could bake longer and be more developed prior to birth

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ClancyHabbard t1_ive0s68 wrote

Placentas don't really do well after about 42 weeks (a normal human pregnancy is about 40 weeks), so that would also be an issue that would need to be solved.

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sleepyr0b0t t1_ivedxtm wrote

Nope. It would be very hard to walk and live in general. Just create artificial womb then.

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