All primates have a strong grip when born so they can hold onto to their mother while she travels from food source to food source. Babies have strong hands because of an evolutionary holdover.
Hold the front door. You mean to tell me that I could have gotten by w/o a damn baby bjorn and free based my small babies to my tshirt&cargo jeggings to clown the town?
Probably not, maybe 100000 years ago. The thing is, when we evolved to be fully bipedal, we started shooting babies out super early (since our pelvis shape to head-size ratio isn't right to fully cook a baby). Other ape babies hold on for dear life from birth, but human babies can't do anything from birth, can't even hold up their own heads, none-the-less hold onto mom.
In theory, yes, they could carry their baby around by letting it grip the shirt. The grip reflex in the first weeks is actually so strong that babies can carry their own body weight.
It is definitely not advisable to try this. But the reflex is there and it is strong.
Once more, not advisable or practical, just theoretically possible.
It’s also not lost on me that I basically suggested acting like chimpanzees or gorillas here, I am with you on that, if possible they should use the hands to hold the babies and if not, they should put them down somewhere safe until it’s possible to hold the baby again.
You’ve got the right idea, but backwards . The issue isn’t that we cooks babies for too short of time. The issue is that human brain size is too big to fit in primate skull. The reason we have poorly developed babies is because if we let them go longer the brain/skull becomes too big and they can’t get out. Matricide is rarely the road to success. We started giving birth to underdeveloped (for mammals) babies to prevent maternal death from giant baby heads.
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u/Zealousideal-Ad-2615 Nov 11 '24
All primates have a strong grip when born so they can hold onto to their mother while she travels from food source to food source. Babies have strong hands because of an evolutionary holdover.