Baby Parenting Guide

Why do some baby animals take care of themselves and find food, and human babies can't?

Some animals, right after they were born are able to look for food on their own, and take care of themselves (e.g. baby snakes) without their mother's supervision. Human babies, on the other hand, require complete care from their mother. They cannot take care of themselves.

Public Response to Why do some baby animals take care of themselves and find food, and human babies can't?

1. My human baby is 28 and still needs care from me ($$), her father
2. I dont know exactly why, but humans along with other apes, moneys and primates have a different approach to offspring than other animals. They and we usually have a very small number of offspring (1 or 2?) at one time so we can devote all of our attention to raising them and ensuring that they survive. Then, after a couple of years, they and we may have another. This is about the opposite of what some species like turtles do....where they lay hundreds of eggs and have only some survive. But by laying such a large number, they probablility that some will survive is greater.
3. cuz that's how God made us
4. It has something to do with innate behavior, because some insects just seem to "know" what do once they hatch from an egg, even turtles do. I don not think science has found a way to find out how, but humans do have an innate ability to help them survive when born, such as getting startled after shock, keeping their hands in a fist position so they can cling onto the mother and not fall off. Also, humans/mammals have a longer life span compared to insects and other animals, so they have time to learn new abilities to survive, unlike insects which only live from a few days to months so they need that innate ability to take care of them selves and survive.
5. We have a long lifespan, and so we take a long time to grow up. It takes 1/4 of our life to get ready to take care of ourselves.
6. Depends on the species and how it evolved. Humans can take care of their babies and feed them. Snakes really can't care for their babies so much. And, actually, a LOT of animals require their mother's help. mammals, for the most part, are helpless without their mothers. Same with birds. But when it comes to reptiles, amphibians, insects and lower forms of life, their offspring are usually born self sufficient. It's all based on how they evolved to be.
7. There is a lot of variation across the animal kingdom in the strategies for acheiving a next-generation. Many animals have no parental care at all (like many fish and reptiles), and will actually eat their own juvenile animals if they find them. Others have prolonged parental care - humans are one example here, but look at birds with prolonged offspring-rearing too. The question is "what works?" in terms of having a next generation. The "have lots of children, and don't care for any of them" works well under some circumstances - but this would not work well for humans. Our babies are actually born *under-developed*, because we have a large brain (and therefore large head), but are bipedal (and so have restrictions on the shape our pelvis can adopt). This means that our babies have to be born quite under-developed, otherwise they'd be physically unable to fit through the birth canal. And this therefore means that we have evolved the strategy of caring for them for prolonged periods afterwards.