Offsring Maturity Time Spans?

I've been trying to find a chart or something to indicate the changing times for offspring to mature. It just seems to me that the human offspring, with the enormous time span until maturity, just leaps up out of the ooze of evolution with little or no "steps".

Is that true? Or are there other species where the offspring require years and years of constant care? I did try to google this but was rather unsuccessful unless I want to read millions of pages of articles ...which I didn't.

Baron Max

 

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Yeah pretty much only homids and just gets worse. But it was no "leap" out of evolution. There is a species of great ape(an ancestor) that babies actually clung to momma with an opposed toe. Momma was free to work/fight/do everything the male could do AND carry the kid around, cause the kid could handle it's own weight at least. It's been downhill from there and with the loss of that toe, females kinda got screwed since they were left with the baggage...until present day (more or less).

I don't think Gen Y will ever leave the nest, personally.

 

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Yeah, but with the ape you're talkin' about ...how many years did the baby cling to it's momma and require constant care? 13 years? 10?

Where, in the long string of evolutionary trends, did the idea of such a long, long maturity time occur. Has any other animal ever existed where the offspring required years of constant care before maturity?

Baron Max

 

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Human beings in several known fisher/gatherer societies are self sufficient by age eight - precocious ones at five or six.

There are quite a few animals that routinely care for their young, with diminishing intensity, four or more years - elephants, apes, and the like.

The gap is not that wide.

 

Most mammals do care for their young for quite some time. Cats need to teach their cubs to hunt, elephants have to teach vast migration patterns and watering holes. There is a gradation from other animals to mammals to primates to hominids.

 

Got any evidence of that or any reliable articles? I'd be interested in reading it/them.

Baron Max

 

I agree with that, yet most (if not all) of those animals, the young at about 1-to-2 years, are fully functional animals ....and if possible could survive on their own.

No human baby could survive at 4 or even 8 on their own. What I'm trying to figure out is why that particular genetic "accident" happened to take hold in early man ...when it's obviously not a good situation to have. One woman could have as many as five or six offspring that required a lot of intensive care ...and without knowing who the father was to boot! So she couldn't take him to the Supreme Cave Court to demand child support.

Baron Max

 

It's not so obvious that it's bad. If there is an advantage to having culture, then it's an advantage to teach it, even if it takes a long time. The thing is, primates don't have much of a culture, humans do. An extended childhood could be an adaptation to the size of the birth canal. Maybe it takes that long to ensure our brains grow to their full size. If we grew up faster, our brains would have to reach maturity that much sooner.

 

What are you saying here, Spider? ...that "nature" knew that one day the early hominds would someday have a grand culture of leisure and wonderous things, so it planned ahead?? Spider, the cultural teaching advantage didn't come into play with early man until very late in the game.

I think I understand some, if not most, of the advantages for longer juvenile spans ....but that's ONLY for a fully functional culture and society. In the days of the Neanderthal, it sure coudn't have been an advantage .....to the contrary, it must have been a horrible disadvantage.

So, ...what caused it and why did Mr. and Mrs. Evolution permit it to stay around until it was needed ....thousands of years later?

Baron Max

 

Everything with humans is "late in the game", relatively. When I speak of culture, I don't mean civilization, I mean hunting techniques, language, patterns of migration, tools, weapons, making clothing. All these things provide a survival advantage, and existed very early in our prehistory. It's likely that Neanderthals grew up faster.

 

Human children can care for themselves at about 8. Speaking strictly they can find shelter and find food for themselves, hunt small animals if needed. They can even provide care for younger children (probably not the best care, but they'll probably both live). However they most likely wouldn't be sexually mature yet. Isn't that a qualification for being considered mature?

 

So which came first ...the slow rate of maturity or the "culture"?

And does the theory of evolution address this issue at all in humans? Where can I read about this issue by reliable scientists?

Baron Max

 

Can't you just see a lioness caring for her helpless baby for eight years?! Or a forest gorilla clinging to her helpless baby for eight years?

Hell, at eight years old, most of the higher forms of mammals are in the middle years of their lives.

How and why did hominids suddenly veer off of that evolutionary track ...and become the one and only animal that has helpless offspring ....that remian helpless for eight years?!

Baron Max

 

I think it roughly correlates with the 'brain volume/body volume' ratio.

 

Brain volume. The human brain cannot fully develop pre-birth because then the head would not fit through the birth canal.
Apparently, it is a better solution than widening the birth canal.

 

Ahh, yeah, but....

Did when did Mr. and Mrs. Evolution decide to make those changes in hominids? Did the offspring maturity come first, then the brain to take care of it? Or did the brain size increase, then the helpless offspring change came about to give the brain something to do?

Why don't we have some good YouTube videos on stuff like this ...instead of the endless videos on people sucking beer up their noses and stuff like that? All it would take is a good YouTube video of the hominids interacting on the African plains some 140,000 years ago. What's so freakin' hard about that???

Baron Max

 

You haven't read the thread very well, have you, Enmos? Wanna' try again?

Baron Max

 

This pure speculation, but I guess that at first the increasing brain volume wasn't that much of a problem.
At one point however, it started to cause problems. It's pretty deadly out in nature when you can't get your baby out.
That must be when evolution selected for mothers that gave birth to babies that were not entirely 'finished'.

 

Huh ? One is an effect of the other.

Edit: Are you looking for something like this ?

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http://brainmuseum.org/evolution/paleo/index.html

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http://www.archure.net/science/higherintelligence.html

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http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/10/fun-with-homini-2.html

 

The thread is not about the brain, Enmos, but about the time span for offspring to mature. In all/most other mammals, the offspring mature damned quickly ....yet in humans/hominids, the offspring take years and years to mature. Why? When? How?

Go back and read through the thread, ....it ain't very long and you'll see what we're talkin' about.

Baron Max