I recently saw a video of an elephant being born and it immediately got up and attempted to walk. It was fairly successful too.
In: Biology
Most things are born knowing how to use their body.
Humans are pretty unique in how bad our babies are. It’s like 50% that walking upright messed up our hips and now babies have to be born through too small a gap in the bones so we have to have mushy half baked babies. Human babies don’t even have the fat around most of the nerve cells in their brain at birth. Meaning a good section of a baby’s brain just doesn’t work at all. They move all weird because they literally just don’t have functional motor control sections of their brain. They couldn’t walk even if they knew how because their brain just doesn’t function right for months. because humans had to give birth too early because the mom would die if their head got any bigger or harder so they get a mushy half grown head then come out and finish after.
50% is just, there was millions of years of evolving to have babies born to walk on 4 legs, evolution perfected baking that right into new born animals. Then we walk all weird, so there hasn’t been any time for software updates. We basically threw away all the evolution over all the millions of years for encoding how to walk on 4 legs things usually get and have to learn a whole new skill of 2 leg walking. Even a baby crawling on it’s knees doesn’t really walk like a 4 leg animal does.
Many mammals are born fairly well-developed. They have long gestations so that they can develop a lot within the womb, and come out able to quickly walk and fend for themselves reasonably well.
Humans, on the other hand, have to be born a little less developed. The reason for this is our big, powerful brains. They need a big head to fit in. And a big head is difficult, painful, and dangerous to give birth to. We give birth to our babies a little earlier (relatively) in development – they’re small, with underdeveloped skulls and no ability to take care of themselves…. but at least they still have squishy heads that can fit through a birth canal. It takes many months more of growth and care for human babies to develop enough to take those first steps.
For many animals, being able to run is their primary survival technique so those muscles and parts of their brain are pretty well-developed when they are born.
Evolutionary survival.
Animals born in dens, nests, or other defensible position tends to need development time. Often predators, where one or both parent brings food back.
Animals that are “born in a field” tend to be able to walk within a few minutes or less. Often prey, that needs to be able to run away from the parents hunting for food.
things i learned today: the reason babies are screaming, shitting and pissing is because we, as a species are very smart. The only reason why our toddlers don’t jump out of vaginas ready to file taxes, is because of our humongous brains
Necessity and evolution.
Over time, the ancestors of modern species had to adapt to their environment, especially predators.
Babies that were slower to walk were more likely to die/be eaten. The ones that can walk and run sooner live longer, passing the genes that give these animals the ability to walk quickly after birth.
They are prey.
The longer they cannot run away, the more likely they will be dinner for something.
The Prey animals that evolved to run early are the ones that passed on their genetic code to the next generation.
You could equally ask how some animals are able to breathe immediately after being born. The answer is that they develop as much as evolution figured out they needed to survive, subject to the constraints of their and their mother’s anatomies.
The answer to this kind of question is always the same.
The animals of that species that were not born able to walk immediately, simply died or were killed by predators or some other thing in the environment. This prevented them from passing on whatever genes determine that you would not be able to walk at birth, and so no more animals with those genes had the chance to be born.
that’s the definition of natural selection.
it’s also the answer to these questions:
“why are some cows brown and some black”
“why do flamingos have long legs that bend backwards”
etc.
the answer is always “because the ones that weren’t like that did not survive so they did not pass on their genes, and only the ones that are like that did survive and did pass their genes to the next generation”
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