WHY WON'T THAT BABY STOP CRYING?!
Girl, he don't want you gettin' it!
Hey babies, Trace here for DNews!
Thanks for watching!
Part of being a new parent is dealing with a wailing infant, sacrificing sleep and sanity
to keep the new creature calm, warm, quiet, and fed.
A new study in the journal Evolution, Medicine and Public Health is bringing the reality
of your little bundle of selfishness to light!
Babies don't want siblings!
Think about it, if your baby is screaming and crying, that's not exactly the sexiest
environment for making ANOTHER baby.
If you're taking care of your baby you're not in the bedroom gettin' freaky.
It's genius!
BABIES ARE TINY GENIUSES!
Which explains their big heads, I guess...
Newborns want to EAT every 2-3 hours.
Evolutionarily, newborn eating means breast-feeding.
There have been numerous studies showing the hormones, antibodies and nutrients passing
from the mother to the child during breast-feeding.
Breast-feeding has also been connected to hormonal changes responsible for a lack of
motherly ovulation.
No eggs, no new babies!
Turns out, over the first year of life, the newborn's crying habits can change, depending
on the genes it inherited from the parents.
Certain genes from dad would cause the baby to cry MORE and keep the mother awake longer,
because when living in the wild, it's not in the father's best interest to have the
mother ovulate again, because she could be impregnated by a competing male!
We've talked about the effect of birth order on DNews, so you might recall, the firstborn
gets 100 percent of the parent's resources!
That monopoly has huge developmental advances, so it's not just in the best interest of a
dad to keep the mom from breeding again, but the kid too!
As humans moved away from our ancient, natural, existence into this modern one we stopped
breeding as much as possible and hoping some survive, and instead ensure the survival of
every kid we birth!
Who does that?
That is a very different evolutionary imperative.
This conversation inevitably finds its way to a simple evolutionary question: Why would
we evolve super loud babies if we're hiding from predators in the wild?!
Chimpanzee babies wail too, bird babies are noisy, even insect babies have learned attention-getting
behavior.
It might attract predators, but rather more importantly, it gets the parents attention
to feed, protect, warm, or comfort it.
Some scientists feel wailing sends evolutionary signals to parents the baby is fighting for
survival -- and is vigorous.
I couldn't find any science explaining some predatory disadvantage to wailing, but considering
the number of species that DO IT, it's probably no thang.
We'll have to see.
In the end, hunger and sexual discouragement is just one of many reasons babies will wail
through the night, they'll also cry to announce their pain, anger, or fear.
A study in the Spanish Journal of Psychology looked at infant's subtle body language to
find which.
For example, open-eye crying means fear or anger, closed-eye crying is pain.
Babies are pretty smart little buggers, messing with their parents sexual cycles, sleep cycles
and food cycles.
Many parents debate the best way to respond to crying, and I'm not here to settle THAT,
but over time primates respond less and less to their babe's wailing, and the kid learns
to do things on their own.
You humans will just have to decide for yourself.
Babies are weird, and they're gross and they're something else...
Beautiful maybe?
If you like things that are weird, gross and beautiful click here to see my friend Catie
Wayne's show about weird, gross and beautiful things!
It's fun and cute and fun every week.
How do you feel about babies after this?
Tell us in the comments below, and subscribe for more weird news.
Plus, I'm on Twitter!
Come find me at-TraceDominguez!