"Feather" asks: New born babies cry because they are getting used to breathing, older babies cry because it is their way of expressing a problem so why do people who can talk cry when they are sad or when they are in pain?
So it is that babies do not need to cry to get used to breathing, from the moment the umbilical cord is cut off we all breathe regardless of the sounds we make. Crying, at any age, is a means of communication and is probably the most ancient form of communication shared by humans and most mammals. Crying is universal: we all cry with the same sounds and facial expressions, yet it is also the language we understand the least. Even what you take for granted: the role of babies' cries is heavily disputed.
Apparently there is no problem understanding why babies cry, this is their way of telling us that they need us. The main distress that babies report to us is loneliness. For monkeys and for our ancestors during evolution, distance from mother and the pack means immediate danger that necessitates a cry for help. Chimpanzee puppies cry with sounds similar to ours but much less than human puppies: already at the age of a few weeks, the puppy manages to grab hold of its mother's fur and stay close to her throughout infancy. In tribes where the child is close to the mother's body, babies cry distinctly less than in Western society on its sterile and distant cradles. Adherents of the "continuity theory" see this as proof that we are adapted to constant intimate contact between the child and the mother and that the prolonged crying of the baby is a result of the modern lifestyle. The explanation is reasonable and is based on many observations of infant behavior in different cultures, yet something is missing.
In traditional societies, a carrier made of cloth is used to allow the mother to function with the child on her. Indeed baby carriers are among the oldest tools known to archaeology. And yet a baby carrier requires fabric and many generations have passed since we moved to standing upright and lost the fur until the textile revolution. During that entire period, mother could not both carry the baby and collect food. There is no escaping the assumption that for millions of years the babies were placed near the mother but not on top of her for a long time each day. A common hypothesis is that baby babbling (a universal and unique form of communication for humans) is a means developed by our ancient mothers who had to put the baby aside.
Crying is an energetically expensive activity: a crying baby devotes about 13% of the calories it burns to this and it could be expected that there would be an advantage for those who cry a little less when they are alone. Close monitoring of the baby's cries yields more puzzles. The baby increases the frequency of crying from birth to the age of 6 weeks, keeps it constant until the age of three months, and then the crying starts to decrease. Crying has a cycle throughout the day when the best cries are produced by babies in the afternoon and evening. These are universal characteristics: even the babies of the tribes where the principle of continuity is observed maintain this legality of crying, although the duration of the crying is shorter each time.
If indeed the whole purpose of crying is to ask for closeness, food or cleanliness, what is the meaning of these changes that are not related at all to the objective state of the baby? Biologist Joseph Soltis offers a revolutionary and controversial explanation. Crying, according to him, is the baby's way of branding itself as sturdy and healthy. In the case of many animals, parents are forced to abandon, neglect or even kill puppies whose chances of survival seem slim. Thus, for example, storks that have hatched several chicks kill the weak and slow-growing ones in favor of their robust brothers, mice that are unable to raise all the chicks kill and eat some of them. If humans also killed weak babies or abandoned them through dealing with scarce resources, then an evolutionary advantage was created for the baby that would signal to its parents that it is strong, healthy and worth investing in. Soltis analyzed the acoustics of babies' cries and showed that there are clear and constant characteristics to the cries of a healthy baby. The cry consists of syllables that last half a second to a second and a half, the frequency of the main sound is 600-400 Hz and the melody will always include a decrease in frequency before the end of the cry. Sick babies cry with a different sound and a different melody. The cries of babies suffering from Down's syndrome, for example, are deeper and "flatter" and in babies who were affected by cocaine during pregnancy the frequency is higher and rises towards the end of the cry. Babies suffering from hearing impairments utter longer "syllables" and invest less energy in high sounds. In babies who, later in their development, were found to be on the autistic continuum, the fundamental frequency of the sound (fundamental frequency) is higher on average and the whine duration is shorter. There were those who suggested that this difference in acoustics in babies on the autistic spectrum is not only a symptom but a factor that worsens their condition due to the baby's difficulty in producing the desired parental response.
In Sparta they killed weak babies
Killing weak and sick babies was accepted in various cultures until Christianity and Islam eradicated the phenomenon in a large part of the earth. For example, Plutarch testifies that in Sparta the father would bring his son to examiners from among the elders of the tribe. Apotita, a kind of chasm at the foot of Mount Taygtus. By saying that it is not in the best interest of the newborn himself nor in the best interest of the public to raise a child who is not healthy."
Anthropologists have found that killing babies is a common phenomenon in different cultures in all parts of the world. The dubious record was recorded among the Eipo tribe in New Guinea where 41% of newborns (20 out of 49) were killed during a 4-year follow-up period. Soltis counted in the anthropological literature 21 tribes where the disability of the baby is considered an accepted reason for killing it and 40 societies where birth out of wedlock or the absence of a father justifies killing. Even in Western societies where active infanticide is taboo, cases of passive infanticide, i.e. abandonment of an injured infant, are common. Neglect to the point of abandonment is a common and ancient phenomenon, it is hard to assume that the chilling description in the book of Ezekiel is not based on eyewitness testimony "And in your birth, on the day you gave birth to you, you did not cut down a fern, and in water you did not bathe in water, and in salt you did not conceive, and the diaper Not a panty. I will not keep an eye on you to do one of these things to take pity on you and you will be thrown to the face of the field in the disgust of your soul on the day you gave birth to you." This kind of saving by giving up on those who "make no sense" to invest in is an incentive for the baby to prove its strength with the only means at its disposal: the voice. According to this theory the "colic" - crying attacks that are attributed to "gas" but have no known medical cause are not a disease but an extreme of the normal behavior pattern: a demonstration of resilience through frequent and loud crying.
Objection to the theory
This theory, as expected, does not receive general agreement, the opponents point out that excessive crying is precisely related to negative emotions of the mother and that there is no phenomenon of killing sick puppies among our ape relatives. The changes in the frequency of crying with age and throughout the day can be a side effect of the development of the nervous system with age and the difficulty of the newborn to adjust his biological clock throughout the day. Opponents of the theory point out that "colic" is almost unknown in traditional societies where the baby is close to its mother and is often breastfed. Alternative but equally bold hypotheses claim that crying is a means of blackmail. In terms of the sound, it seems that the baby "intends" to cause a feeling of discomfort and to prevent the dullness of the baby: the characteristics of the baby's cry: a rapid increase in the volume of the voice, a "broadband" of frequencies and sharp changes in the sound and intensity cause that even those whose rest is not disturbed by the noise of cars or the dripping of air conditioners will wake up Repeatedly cries of a baby in the neighbor's apartment. A loud crying sound is wasteful and can even be dangerous when there are predators around and the crying baby forces the parents to give him more than they were supposed to in order to prevent him from harming himself. Reinforcement for this claim is found in the behavior of chimpanzee cubs who slam their heads on the ground to squeeze out their clean approvals. Another theory, which exhausted parents will easily understand, is that crying increases the investment required from the parents and therefore delays the birth of the younger sibling who is a dangerous competitor for attention and food. It is interesting to note that without awareness of evolutionary theories, a guide book for parents states that "colic in babies is the most effective preventive measure".
Well, feather, it turns out that science has yet to crack the enigma of the most primal human sound: the baby's cry. The crying of adults poses no less great perplexities and their own column will be dedicated to them.
Did an interesting, intriguing, strange, delusional or funny question occur to you? sent to ysorek@gmail.com
