why is childbirth/labor so long for humans compared to other animals?

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Is it because of the whole big head/bipedalism thing? Other mammals can pop out babies in no time and it seems like that would be way more advantageous for multiple reasons (less stress on mom and baby, not in a vulnerable position for hours in the wild, etc). Why does the norm skew towards a day rather than hours?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Because we walk upright and have large brains.

Walking upright requires that we have narrower hips, which means narrower birth canals.

Large brains mean we need big heads, which are hard to push through a narrow birth canal.

This is also why human children need so long to develop. Our brains can’t fully develop in the womb like other animals because then our heads would be too big to fit through the birth canal.

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