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why do babies cry so much?

andyandy

anthropomorphic ape
andyandy
Joined
Apr 30, 2006
Messages
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just a quickie,

surely babies wailing away as they do at all times of the day can't have been especially beneficial on an evolutionary timescale - as patrolling sabre tooth tigers and the like would have been attracted to the sound.....thus the louder the baby, the more likely they were to end up as a big cat's lunch. So shouldn't babies have evolved to be a bit quieter?

:)
 
On the other hand, the quieter the baby, the more likely it's mother was to ignore it or not notice it...
 
I found this article interesting:
A Darwinian Look at a Wailing Baby
Remember that its not just human young that cry. Bird chicks put out a hell of a lot of noise. We have screech owls nesting in the church tower opposite us and when the chicks are in the nest it is an infernal recket1.

1That is "racket" but said with a South African accent.
 
Last edited:
andyandy said:
just a quickie,

surely babies wailing away as they do at all times of the day can't have been especially beneficial on an evolutionary timescale - as patrolling sabre tooth tigers and the like would have been attracted to the sound.....thus the louder the baby, the more likely they were to end up as a big cat's lunch. So shouldn't babies have evolved to be a bit quieter?

:)
Click to expand...

I have read in the past that babies in a stimulating environment are less likely to cry? So when being carried by their mothers and so on it may not be true that they cry a lot?
 
andyandy said:
just a quickie,

surely babies wailing away as they do at all times of the day can't have been especially beneficial on an evolutionary timescale - as patrolling sabre tooth tigers and the like would have been attracted to the sound.....thus the louder the baby, the more likely they were to end up as a big cat's lunch. So shouldn't babies have evolved to be a bit quieter?

:)
Click to expand...

The evolutionary advantage of alerting one's parents that one is in danger appears to outweigh the evolutionary disadvantage of alerting one's predators that one is nearby.
 
Yowling babies signify to predators that their highly overprotective parents are likely to be about as well. In fact, just behi......
 
andyandy said:
just a quickie,

surely babies wailing away as they do at all times of the day can't have been especially beneficial on an evolutionary timescale - as patrolling sabre tooth tigers and the like would have been attracted to the sound.....thus the louder the baby, the more likely they were to end up as a big cat's lunch. So shouldn't babies have evolved to be a bit quieter?

:)
Click to expand...
You're forgetting that even the earliest hominids would have been social animals, living in groups, and that the wailing infant would have been surrounded by a crowd of adults, all armed with at the very least rocks to throw at any predators attracted by the sound. So there would be no need for evolution to select against crying babies, unlike, say, white-tailed deer, whose fawns were left alone for long periods and who needed to be quiet while Mother was away. Crying fawns didn't live long enough to pass along the genes for crying while Mother was away.

Crying hominid infants could cry all they wanted, protected by the tribe. Even a colicky baby, screaming pointlessly for hours on end, wouldn't have been in danger from a predator, who could only pace in frustration just beyond the reach of the sticks and stones, and, later on in pre-history, the flaming torches.
 
Babies generally only cry when they really need something. I'd guess that colic and very fussy babies are the by-product of the larger societies of pre-humans where we were far more likely to be predators than prey. But babies that wail for no discernible reason, even when being carried most of the time and well fed are the exception and not the norm.
 
Because they are tired, hungry , thirsty ,in pain, scared or bored.

Dogs eat furniture for similar reasons.
 
You could argue that crying while a sabertooth is patrolling is more efficient than crying in a crib in a suburban home. There were no real risks to me in waiting for the next commercial/half-time/end of the chapter/etc. before responding to the crying infant. If I had the need to be covert and quiet, less be eaten, the diapers would have been significantly less latency bewteen the onset of the cry and the bottle being put in the babies mouth.
 
There's a wide variation in how much babies cry, too. My daughter never cried. To the point where when she was a couple of weeks old I was googling variations on 'baby doesn't cry' to see if maybe there was something wrong with her! She'd fuss a bit, but put her to the breast and she was instantly happy.

Now she's a toddler, and boy, there's a stage where the sabertooth tigers probably had a good shot at snatching up a kid or two. Turn around for 2seconds and she's running off as fast as her wee little legs can carry her.
 
How about "They cry because they have no other means to express their discomfort/displeasure/hunger?"

Or is that too basic? :)
 
What happens if you eat and then lie down? You increase your chances of heartburn.

So this is my wild guess, babies have a lot heartburn from being fed and then laid down.

It may not be coincidence that they stop crying so much when they are old enough to stay upright after being fed.

Please feel free to shoot down my idea. :)
 
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