I’m watching a documentary and noticed how chill great ape babies are. They’re quite content just holding onto their mom, and you never see them crying in the same shrill, oftentimes excessive way human babies do.
Swaddled wrong? Cry. Gassy? Cry. Hungry? Cry. Too full? Throw up, then cry.
What gives?
In: 5
Communication, if you have a good ear you can after some time tell what they are crying about..
my first boy didn’t cry I legit asked my GP if he was ok coz I thought all babies cried non stop.
One anthropologist (Sarah Hrdy) posited an evolutionary mechanism. If an ape or monkey puts a baby down for a bit, it’s best chance of survival is to stay quiet and hope mum comes back. It can last for a good bit. A human baby is basically fucked if mum does not come back, very quickly. So make lots of really penetrating noise (babies’ cries are tuned to maximum annoyance), to remind her.
I think there’s a difference between ‘fourth trimester’ crying, when babies are incredibly vulnerable and dependent, and what happens after (at least) three months.
From that point on, I think the baby’s social environment will influence how they cry. Deaf YouTuber Jessica Kellgren-Fozard is raising her child speech-and-sign bilingual. She’s talked about how sign helped him communicate before he developed speech, reducing his frustration quite a bit.
In some places babies don’t cry often – which may be because they’re always with their mother while in the most needy stage. As soon as they can walk they’re in the care of another child, or an older person – who aren’t going to respond to them like a parent would. Prevalent corporal punishment also leads to kids keeping quiet as soon as they’re able to control their voices.
Crying monke in jungle will get eaten, very quickly.
Crying monke in urban jungle don’t usually get eaten, so they cry for mom’s attentions.
also, due to walking upright, narrower pelvises (which is why childbirth is so dangerous) it means the pregnancy time had to be shorter than they should be. because if they got any bigger it would kill the mother. our babies come out waaaaay under-developed in comparison a giraffe, which can walk and feed itself the same day its born
I’ve seen parents of monkeys slap the shit or straight leave a crying baby. Crying is a sure way to put the entire tribe in danger. Baby animals learn quickly to shut up.
All of the ancestors of the crying baby were effective at getting their parents attention with prompt crying. Demanding baby and neurotic 24 hour focused parenting mean otherwise helpless baby survives.
Being loud isn’t a drawback for modern humans because almost no predator will deliberately pick a fight with a group of awake humans. So with the helplessness of the baby, it’s far outweighed by getting attention.
The first thing a baby deer learns is how to walk, they can do it almost immediately after being born, because that’s the strongest adaptation deer have, running away from predators.
The first thing a human baby does is cry, because that’s the strongest adaptation we have, asking for help.
Well, there are good reasons in the comments, but have you considered this ones?
– We’ve lost our basic understanding of mimicry, body language and scent/pheromones. Usually a cry from a baby is a VERY urgent allarm. We don’t catch the early signals, like restlessness, groping around, moving the lips ( this means the baby would like to eat)
– For primates we spend an incredible amount of time not being around our offspring. We’re just so busy and/or distracted.
– Skin to skin, mama’s scent( pheromones) are whats comforts the baby, yet we cover the baby in latera of thick fabric and use copious amounts of products that mask our natural scent.
And probably so much more
It’s a semi-well known phenomenon that African babies don’t cry, or cry much less babies in other cultures. Basically, they are highly highly attended to, and only cry if something is actually very wrong.
https://shafiamonroe.com/babies-dont-cry-africa/
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