Tag: desilva

• Why Are Newborn Humans Useless? |Squished Pt3|

  

  Okay, so newborns are effectively needy hot water bottles. But instead of looking at their helplessness at birth as a negative thing, we should consider the benefits.

  Aradia Wyndham

  November 1, 2018

  Babies, Birth, Blog, Pregnancy

  advancement factor, altricity, ardipithecine, Australopithecus afarensis, bipedalism, Birth, brain size, coypu, dear hank and john, desilva, dunsworth, evolution, extrauterine spring, featured, fetal constraints, IMMR, Lucy, maternal, metabolism, natural selection, neonataes, newborns, nine banded armadillo, obstetrical dilemma, oxygen, pelvic width, podcast, Portmann, precocious, sambar deer, secondary altricity, social learning, useless, wild boar

• Body Hair

  

  Non-human apes don’t need a tool to carry their infants in part because they have body hair for their infants to cling to but it’s more complicated than simply having body hair and a baby that can grasp it.

  Aradia Wyndham

  October 24, 2018

  Evolution of Babywearing

  afarensis, amaral, apes, arboreal, attachment, Australopithecus, baby feet, baby hands, babywearing, back carry, bipedalism, body hair, chimpanzee, clinging, desilva, dorsal carry, evolution, friction, gibbon, gorilla, grasping, gravity, great apes, hair, hair loss, human, humans, IMMR, infant carrier, infants, invention, Jane Goodall, knuckle walking, Lucy, Mother Nurture, neonates, orangutan, primates, quadrupedal, Ross, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, static friction coefficient, tensile tester, the great denuding, ventral position, wall-scheffler

• Baby Feet

  

  Human feet are unique in the ape family, made for walking instead of grasping. For our babies this means two fewer grasping limbs to help cling to their mother, which means that during the evolution of bipedalism, infants had a harder time hanging on. How did our ancestors survive?

  Aradia Wyndham

  July 12, 2017

  Blog, Evolution of Babywearing

  afarensis, almaral, ape, Australopithecus, baby, baby feet, babywearing, bipedalism, Breastmilk, caloric costs, calories, chimpanzee, clinging, desilva, evolution, foot morphology, hominin, human, IMMR, infant, infant carrier, John Reader, laetoli tracks, Lucy, mother, newborns, opposable hallux, palmar grasp reflex, parent, parkers, plantar reflex, primitive, reflexes, riders, selam, tanzania, technology

• Big Babies

  

  It’s not just that human babies are helpless at birth, it’s that they’re so huge, at least when we compare them to the size of other apes’ newborns. Fortunately we have all kinds of technology to help us carry them around. But how far back in history were our evolutionary ancestors dealing with these big babies?

  Aradia Wyndham

  March 19, 2015

  Evolution of Babywearing

  adaptation, afarensis, altricial, attachment, austrolopithecus, babywearing, bipedalism, Birth, body hair, breastfeeding, Breastmilk, carrying, chimpanzee, clinging, desilva, dunsworth, energetic costs, energetics of gestation, foot morphology, gorilla, grasping, hominidae, homo, hrdy, human life history, IMMR, infant carrier, Lucy, mothering, neonatal, ontogeny, parenting, precocity, reflexes, selam, taylor, technology