31 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Genetic Language is Abstract and Flexible
The awesome power that genetic engineering will
one day place in our hands was foreshadowed recently
by some experimenters at the University of Basel in
Switzerland. Walter Gehring and his students were
studying the effects of the eyeless gene in fruit flies. The
gene is called eyeless because its absence causes flies to
grow without eyes. The gene actually causes eyes to grow. Gehring and the students inserted the gene into
various tissues of embryonic flies, and the embryos
grew into flies ... 1 
notes
notes31 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Join a Community as Parents
For evolutionary reasons, human babies were never meant to be born and raised in isolation from a group. Psychotherapist Ruth Josselson believes it is especially important for young mothers to create and maintain an active social tribe after giving birth. There are two big problems with this suggestion: 1) Most of us don’t live in tribes, and 2) we move around so much that most of us don’t even live near our own families, our natural first tribal experience. The result is that many new pa... 1 notes
notesIncludes a great idea for cooking 50 meals for parents of a new baby.
29 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Instinctual Breastfeeding
From an evolutionary point of view, it would seem that last-feeding should be one of the more instinctual behaviors, like eating or sleeping or sex. In most mammals, if mothers don't know how to offer their milk or babies don't know how to suckle, the infant dies. If die purpose of reproduction is to pass on genes, it would seem that feeding would be one of the more hard-wired biological behaviors. In explanation, Wiessinger offered this story: A female gorilla, born and raised in a zoo, gave...
1 Breastfeeding is instinctual, so that separating the mother from the infant can prevent it from happening, but there is a cultural aspect to it as well for primates.
29 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Cross-Species Milk
Our notions of mother's milk come from what we see, and for most of us the milk we see is cow's milk, a brilliant white liquid. But milk from other species looks quite different—kangaroo milk, for example, is pink. But whatever the hue, breast milk is species-specific; that is, the composition is finely tuned to the particular growth and maturational needs and digestive system of the young of each species.^ ^ For example, cow's milk is higher in volatile fatty acids than human milk, and hum... 1 notes
notesA comparison of the milk produced by females of various species, its nutritional content, and what that tells us about their lifestyle.
29 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Crying as an Evolutionary Strategy
Crying evolved to serve the infant's purposes: to assure protection, adequate feeding, and nurturing for an organism that cannot care for itself. By definition, crying is designed to elicit a response, to activate emotions, to play on the empathy of another. The "other" is usually the mother or father or a related caretaker. The caretaker has also evolved the sensory mechanism to recognize that infant cries are a signal of unhappiness, and thus be motivated to do something about it.
This ki... 1 notes
notesInfants cry to motivate mothers to care for them and to promote continual feeding that prevents the mother from ovulating.
29 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
The Paradox of Crying Babies
Crying is the earliest and most compelling of infant signals," writes Ronald Barr, and surely there is no sound on earth more piercing than the cry of an infant. The ability to cry was hard-wired into human babies long ago as a potent signal to get adult attention. Like other primates, human infants needed to be able to send a message of distress to motivate action on the part of someone more able. The same kind of vocal signals are found in Rhesus monkeys, for example, which have very distin... 1 notes
notesThe alarm compels the mother to care for the child, but it can also push them to abuse it.
29 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Altricial Versus Precocial Infants
Not all babies are the same. Human babies are rather helpless, interested mostly in food, sleeping, eating, defecating, and comfort. Compare human babies with newborn deer. When fawns are born, they immediately stand up and soon are able to run away from danger. Scientists call these two types of babies in the animal kingdom altricial and precocial. Altricial infants are born helpless, usually after a short gestation or pregnancy, and their brains tend to be not quite finished. Precocial babi... 1 notes
notesTwo evolutionary strategies for animal infants, born ready versus born helpless but capable of growing into a more advanced state ultimately.
29 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Infant Behavior as a Key to Human Behavior
Staring at that skull, I was struck by the fact that this ancient child was somebody's baby long ago. Perhaps she was sick, or maybe he e was accident-prone, or perhaps this baby was some predator's dinner. Standing there, I could picture him or her long ago, I, smiling, laughing, and reaching out to grab a mother's breast. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
From a biological point of view, the Taung child represents a specific stage of development for Australopithecines, our ... 1 notes
notesThere are secrets to why humans are the way they are in how our children behave.
21 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
The Advantages of Breastfeeding
What are other benefits of breast-feeding? Let's consider a few. We think the Creator intended that your wife should not have an immediate return of her menstrual bleeding after having a baby. She has donated blood to the baby itself (not directly but via the ingredients), and she then loses some incident to its birth. The recovery phase from this loss after the baby is born should not be handicapped by menstruation. It's hard to build up a depleted savings account when regular withdrawals ar...It's healthier for the mother and for the child.
04 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
The Waist-to-Hip Ratio
Why does the waist-to-hip ratio matter? Singh observes that a "gynoid" fat distribution—more fat on the hips, less on the torso—is necessary for the hormonal changes associated with female fertility. An "android" fat distribution-—fat on the belly, thin hips—is associated with the symptoms of male disabilities such as heart disease, even in women. But which is cause and which effect? It seems to me more likely that both the shape and the hormonal effects of it are sexually selected by...
1 Men are unconsciously directing the evolution of women.
