| ▲ | astura 4 days ago |
| > how it takes a human baby 12-18 months to walk but many animals walk as soon as they are born. This is because humans are born with, comparably, extremely immature brains. The animals that can walk after birth are born with more mature brain development than humans are born with, so they are capable of walking. https://www.livescience.com/9760-study-reveals-infants-walk.... |
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| ▲ | evilduck 4 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| It's not completely brain development, look up the stepping reflex in human babies. Humans are just as neurally pre-wired to walk as foals are on day one but we're also born long before we're anywhere near strong enough to do it, it takes at least another 6 months of physical growth and strengthening out of the womb before babies even try. |
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| ▲ | netcraft 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| sure - but how did a horse foal learn how to walk within an hour of their legs being in contact with the ground? Or even for human babies, how are they hard wired to search for milk or even breathe? |
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| ▲ | gherkinnn 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Humans and horses don't share the same evolutionary pressures. A foal gets eaten if it can't walk right away, we don't. Evidently our super brains are worth all the hassle. Unsatisfactory answer, maybe. | |
| ▲ | 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | gambiting 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | >>or even breathe The same way your heart "knows" how to beat - it's a lower level function that happens without your conciousness. That's why people who are brain dead still live and breathe and swallow and digest and their hearts livers and kidneys still do their job. >>how are they hard wired to search for milk The ones who didn't died, to put it bluntly. Obviously not human babies, this evolutionary step happened long long time before the earliest hominids. | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > same way your heart "knows" how to beat - it's a lower level function that happens without your conciousness Heart cells in a Petri dish will happily beat away. | |
| ▲ | s1artibartfast 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That isn't an explanation of how it works. This is kinda like explaining how a car works with "you fire and replace engineers until it moves". | |
| ▲ | netcraft 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | totally - but to be clear the question I have is more like "where in the body is this knowledge encoded (for lack of a better term)" Do you have neurons in your brain that are pre-wired for these things? Is that encoded in your DNA? Like physically how is it inherited and the selective pressures applied? | | |
| ▲ | zamfi 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes, yes, and you got it. Largely it’s DNA that controls development of neurons/muscles/etc. that mediate nursing, walking, and so on. On selective pressures: human babies that aren’t born with the ability to nurse, or foals born without the ability to walk—because their in-utero development didn’t allow it—historically don’t survive, and thus don’t reproduce. | |
| ▲ | detourdog 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think it's a chemical structure reacting to an energetic stimulus. |
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