Why are human babies helpless when they are born?

Here have different different Opinion share by Professionals 

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Franklin Veaux, Professional Writer

Originally Answered: Why are humans so utterly useless for the first portion of their lives? For example, horses can stand and walk within hours, yet an infant human can’t even hold its own head up, let alone crawl.

Human infants are basically born premature.

We have two different, contradictory survival strategies: our huge, highly-developed brains (which give us enormous heads), and our bipedalism (which gives us narrow birth canals).

When huge head meets narrow birth canal, something’s got to give.

Human infants are born underdeveloped because birthing a human baby is already dangerous enough as it is—if they were born more developed, they’d kill the mother during delivery.

More often than they already do, that is.

Welcome to the messy, barely functional, “good enough is good enough” world of evolutionary biology.

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Todd Gardiner, worked at Hieroglyph Photography

Originally Answered: Why are humans so utterly useless for the first portion of their lives? For example, horses can stand and walk within hours, yet an infant human can’t even hold its own head up, let alone crawl.

You actually might compare humans to kangaroos or birds, both of which are utterly helpless when born and in need of concealment and care. A helpless baby is not a unique adaptation for mammals.

It’s pretty hard to call the human baby a bad adaptation, given that the big brain that we have easily overcomes any disadvantage. A net zero, at worst. And, in fact, our intelligence makes us an apex predator in just about every biome, so clearly not a net zero.

Interesting, though, that you ask “why”. Like evolution works toward fulfilling a design or purpose. Because it doesn’t. We can ask how, and explain the processes, but there is no intent behind this result.

The process is that we inherited this from our primate ancestors, who also give birth to helpless young. Intelligent, social creatures can become more intelligent and more social (by developing their brains) if they give birth to their young prematurely. Otherwise, the increased brain size leads to death in childbirth by the mothers. So these adaptations went hand in hand during our evolution, with the maximum of brain size at birth and minimum age for surviving outside the age being refined by the furnace of survival of the fittest.

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Adam Wu

Why are human babies so helpless for so long? Why do we take so long to mature physically and psychologically?

Part of the reason is a trade-off for our big brains and the intelligence it brings us.

Human babies are actually born premature compared to most other mammals. At the moment of birth a human baby is still a fetus by the standards of these other mammals, and that is why human babies are helpless for longer afterwards, relatively speaking.

The reason this happens is because if human babies gestated any longer, their heads would grow too large to safely squeeze through the mother's birth canal. And the birth canals of human women have not evolved to be any larger to accommodate a longer gestation because any greater widening would start to compromise bipedal ambulation and would leave them too vulnerable to predators.

This is also one reason why it is unlikely that humans will evolve to be much more intelligent in the future, even if there were selective pressures favoring even greater intelligence. Human brains have gotten just about as large as is possible as they can get for a primate that needs to be born through a birth canal.

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Praveen Mehta (प्रवीण मेहता)

Originally Answered: Why are humans so utterly useless for the first portion of their lives? For example, horses can stand and walk within hours, yet an infant human can’t even hold its own head up, let alone crawl.

Humans are not useless as infant but they need to be trained to use most important function, thinking- emotions and logical application of thoughts. Basically to develop the brain.

Humans are not born to walk or run only. It’s more than biology it’s psychology too.

You can’t compare the incomparable. Try and think the difference between humans and say, a horse.

Can a horse laugh? Ever thought what all do you need to laugh?

Can a horse make a bridge over a river?

Can a horse make a house?

Humans use first part part of their life getting information and be knowledgeable. (Normally)

The later part is spent for using that knowledge for betterment of own and universal life. (To solve a problem, like electricity for darkness)

A horse can’t ask this question on Quora. A horse does not look after his parents too. That’s logical and emotional function. Got it?

Steve Jones, studied at Imperial College London

Why are humans so utterly useless for the first portion of their lives? For example, horses can stand and walk within hours, yet an infant human can’t even hold its own head up, let alone crawl.

It’s because humans are, like other primates, born into social species that provides group protection. Primates were also originally tree climbers, and that enabled the mother to carry her baby out of the way of most dangerous predators.

In contrast, horses, like antelope, deer and other such animals are born into open grassland and are immediately vulnerable to predators such as lions, leopards, wolves and the like. Whilst the adults of some species, such as buffalo, are large enough to see off most predators, especially when acting in groups (buffalo have been known to kill adult lions), this isn’t the case for horses. In those case, mobility matters almost from birth as, unsporting as it might appear, predators will often target the young.

Primates tend to be dependent on their parents and other members of the social group for some time and go through an extended period of development, including social and other skills. Humans take this to extremes of course, but the tendency is in all primates. In a very real sense, all human children are born premature and human babies are particularly helpless. The reason is simply down to size - a human baby has a simply enormous head in proportion to the rest of his/her body (or even the size of the mother) and this is made more difficult by the relatively narrow hips of humans (as humans evolved as a creature that walked upright and ran). If pregnancy was extended much more so the baby could mature it would imperil the life of the mother. Hence the 9 month term of human pregnancy evolved as the balance point between the maturity of the baby and the mortal threat to the mother during childbirth.

I should add that this extended childhood isn’t confined to primates. Some other mammalian species, such as dolphins feature a relatively long development period.

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Christine Gilbert, Home health care aide

It's a compromise between allowing us to develop enough to survive outside the womb, and putting the mother's life at further risk.

Humans have exceptionally large brains. Compared to our nearest relatives, our brains need twice the space and resources to develop properly. This results in our heads growing faster than the rest of our bodies while in utero.

But human women have proportionally narrow pelvises compared to other primates. So our babies have a much more narrow and twisty birth canal to navigate. There only so much room there, and the skull can only be compressed to a certain point before it damages the brain inside it.

So basically, we stay in utero just long enough for our brains to develop to a functional level. At that point we're still just small enough to pass through the birth canal without, hopefully, dying or killing our mother along the way. Our bodies are left to grow more outside the womb, and can grow very rapidly with proper nutrition.

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Olivia Brown, Civilian Support Staff (2017-present)

Why are animal babies born knowing how to sit up, stand up, run, etc. But human babies can't do hardly anything?

It’s down to evolution and presence of predators. Chimps and orangutans also have very long childhoods (especially orangutans who have 7–8 years before being fully mature and independent).

Animals that have shorter childhoods are generally prey animals. Such as zebras, giraffes, gazelles etc. They live on open land, constantly on the lookout for anything that might eat them. If the babies don’t learn to run quickly, they’ll die. Simple survival of the fittest.

It’s also about cognitive development. We have the most complex brains. If we were to remain in utero until we were fully cooked, as it were, wed probably be in there for 5 years! Now that simply isn’t manageable for the body to carry, so we come out much before that and do most cognitive development in the outside world. We have the luxury of time simply because evolution has made us virtually predator free

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Marguerite Church, former Instructor in Biology Appalachian State University (1984-2008)

Why are are human babies so helpless compared to other animal babies?

The more advanced an animal is, the more responsibility the parent must take to keep it safe and teach it . Humans have babies that are helpless because there is much to teach them. We have some instincts and some automatic actions… the startle reflex, the grasping grip, a fear of falling , fear of loud noises , the nursing reflex As parents we have lots of teaching to do. So babies are born helpless to give us parents time for teaching the little ones .

Other animal babies don't need as much contact with the teachers because they are born with more instincts . If you aren't " smart", you better be blessed from birth with knowing what to do automatically. Most animals live on instinct with learned behavior sprinkled in. When they are born some animals already have a body covering and can even walk and run and have their eyes openRabbits are naked and blind at birth but hares are covered with hair, can see and can walk earlier, Some birds like chickens . Have feathers and can run around after mum shortly after they hatch. Robins on the other hand are hatched naked, blind and unable to walk.

So we have a long time to be with our parents. Most mammals babies do. We need extra time to learn from Mom and Dad because we need it to survive.

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Karen Tiede, old lady in training who lives in a rural area with 6 dogs.

Answering what I think you are asking:  the species evolved to deliver the largest head that could fit through the birth canal.  We could have gestated longer, to allow babies to be born more developed, but then they would kill their mothers in birth (or die trying to be born).  We "evolved" social systems to allow mothers to care for helpless infants so they could in time grow up.

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Keith H. Burgess, Primitive skills instructor, living off grid over 40 years,

Originally Answered: Why are human babies born so helpless in comparison to other animals?

I guess because human animals are able to carry & protect their young, just as Kangaroos can. A Kangaroo joey is also helpless at birth & remains so for quite some time.

Keith.

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Morva Ory, lives in New Orleans (1942-present)

Originally Answered: Why are human babies born so helpless in comparison to other animals?

Humans are born so relatively undeveloped because of their skull/brain size. If they were allowed to develop to the stage that the infant is somewhat independent, their heads would not fit through the pelvis.

If you will check, you will find that most primates’ offspring are born in dependent states for the same reason. They have long childhoods and require parental care longer than, say, cattle and horses. Prey animals such as these are born able to run at speed within a short time after birth, while primate babies cling to their mothers for months, even years, after birth.

We are victims of our intelligence.

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Michael Cannon, studied Medicine and Healthcare

Everyone has pretty much nailed it with the brain, that's the starting point of why human infants are helpless and need so much time and attention before they stand a chance in the world. I believe, however, that this is because all of the things that have arisen out of our large primate brain.

Quick note: I specified primate brain, and we do have the largest brains of our primate brethren, by a lot. However, in the animal kingdom, there seems to be no correlation between brain size and "intelligence", but only when compared to all the other animals. The key here is that different types of animals have varied neuron density. Primates have the highest neuron density. Show me an animal with a brain bigger than mine and I will show you an animal that will never learn algebra.

Okay, back to the things that come with having a large, powerful brain:

• Language
• Complex social relationships and interactions
• Culture
• Accumulated knowledge
• Crafting and use of tools
• Agriculture and cooking

I'm sure there are more, but you get the idea. So many of the things that make us human, and so successful as a species, are things that are learned from the older human you grow up around. Many of these things are nuanced, complex, and took many people a very long time to perfect. If a human infant was born able to run off into the jungle, build a house, trap/skin/prepare game, and select for consumption only the plants that are nutritious and not poisonous, many of them would, and the deep bonds we share with our friends and family, in which people take turns sacrificing their own time and resources to help another, would not have the chance to develop. A sea turtle is born able to swim. And swim it does. It will likely be someone's lunch, but if it swims far enough from shore, all it has to do is keep swimming and open its mouth at the right time.

While many other creatures have evolved incredibly powerful instincts, such as salmon beings able to return to the stream from which they spawned to repeat the whole process. That's incredible, but it's still just one set of God coordinates. Given enough time and the right teacher, any one of us could learn hundreds of those, and teach them to others. The tradition of acquiring and passing down knowledge and material culture, as well as the ability to be able to convey complex ideas to one another, catapulted us into the #1 predator category, and we are hear to stay because we are the ultimate pack animal. 

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Vibhu Pande

Ideally human babies are supposed to be in womb for 21 months. But since our heads have eveloved to grow much larger while the vaginal opening has evolved to get smalled (due to our erect position), the mother is likely to die if the baby is born after 21 months. 

So the nature simply ejects the baby after 9 months and lets the parent figure out how to take care of that helpless thing for next 1 year.

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Ann Dowker, works at University of Oxford

One reason is that all human babies are born ‘prematurely’ compared with those of most other primates - and even more so than most other animal species. A newborn infant of most primate species is comparable in development to a 9-month-old human infant. This is presumably because humans on the one hand have larger heads and brains in proportion to the body than most other species, and on the other hand have narrower pelvises due to walking upright. If a human infant was born at the same level of development as other primates, they could not be born at all (at least in the days before caesarian sections) because their head would be too large to get through the pelvis. Another reason is that humans have evolved to be able to learn to live in a wide variety of environments, but are not as pre-programmed to live in a particular environment as many other species. So they are ultimately capable of learning to build an igloo, navigate the desert, operate a computer, or whatever else a particular environment demands, but in their early lives, need a lot of care and teaching from their parents.

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Terry Loo, studied at Charles Telfair Institute

I am not an expert on the subject but I heard that it is because of 3 things

1) Migratory species that rely on quickly escaping predators like antellopes or gnus need to be be able to escape at any time and thus their children are ready to run within hours but Humans live in shelters and thus can take all the time they need (avg labour is about 10-12 hours) and thus don't need to have quickly functional babies

2) because of our larger cranial boxes, humans have to be born earlier compared to animals who are the same size as us or else the lady would have a very difficult labour. 

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Yosef MacGruber, pro-life advocate, pro-big families, reject birth control

By God’s intelligent design. Because babies have such amazing potential, God wants for parents to spend lots of quality time with their children so as to help them develop better.

I mean animal babies are hardly helpless at all, walking within hours or minutes of being born. There has to be some good reason for the difference.

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Assaph Mehr, works at DocsCorp

Humans need big brains. 

Humans also walk upright, causing the pelvis to change and the birth canal to narrow.

The foetus stays in the womb for as long as it can, growing it's brain. It's a trade off between brain size and readiness vs. the mother not dying in childbirth.

After birth, the barely half-formed little human baby still needs to spend a lot time growing up, whereas other mammals (that do not require such large skulls or walking upright) can stay longer in the womb and emerge further along their growth path.

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Junie Sensabaugh, works at Creature Comforts (2008-present)

All newborns are helpless, needing their mom. animals mature faster than people. When it takes 21 years to become adult you see a much faster development in all animals. Some suggest pets age 1 yr for a very 7 yrs of human development. A 3 yr old dog is really 21 in human yrs. The ‘WHY’ is as unknown now as ever. Wild animals must mature quickly or die. Humans have the luxury of time. Humans also can live to over 100. Animals live much shorter life spans.

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Ginger M. Volz, Mother of many, Legal Scholar and Wise Sage

Why are human babies completely dependant on their parents and animal babies are not completely dependant on their parents?

Humans are animals, so your question is a bit off. Different animals produce babies at different levels of maturity, depending on the complexity of the animal. The more complex the animal, the longer the dependency on the parent.

So reptiles crack out of their shells and are basically ready to go. Amphibians and fish just start swimming and develop with pretty simple skill sets, when compared to a human.

Mammals tend to need the most parental tending. Birds need tending initially but usually within a few weeks they are also off on their own.

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Denise Lemmel, Musician

Originally Answered: Why are human babies born so helpless in comparison to other animals?

Actually we are not! Although lion Cubs can walk right away, but they are born blind and toothless. That's sure good as far as Mom's concerned! Actually Cheetahs & Leopards are born that way also. We are born helpless, but although we can't walk, we can see. Besides lions and elephants, calves & cubs will die without their mothers. But, we are dependent on our mothers, although we can survive with other humans. Primates are like us, they need to be taught everything by their mothers. So, I suppose it depends on what you call helpless. If we didn't have larger brains, and we're left out in the wild, that would definitely be a different scenario.

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David Skarbrevik, Master of Information Data Science, University of California, Berkeley (2017)

As David Kincade mentioned, there is a positive correlation between the "length of helplessness" of a being and the adaptability of that being. For example, imagine you need to be self sufficient as soon as you pop out of the womb. You'd need the neural circuits for how to eat your food (and so many other things) already in place right? But if your parents stayed around, you might get visual cues about eating that could save your life. Perhaps the food that your species was "wired" to eat has vanished and having your parents there to feed you for a few days would teach you how to adapt to these changing times.

As for the specific thought about human brain vs sexual maturity, I would recommend backing up a step or two. Who says that brains are fully developed at age 25? What do you think it means to be fully developed? I'm 26 and I can tell you with confidence that my brain is still developing everyday in a number of ways. Every time I visit a new location or revisit an old location, synaptic pathways in my brain are formed/strengthened while others degrade... I would call this development.

In other words, it's not fair to compare "brain development" and "sexual development" because you're certainly not using the word "develop" the same way in both instances.

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Matthew Gagliano, Engineering Manager

As humans, we have the longest adolescent period of any species on earth. Most of that is the social grooming required to survive, in a tribal environment, before reaching reproductive age.

Here’s just a small list of things we have to understand.

• We need to learn how to walk on two legs.
• Learn how to eat.
• When to go to sleep.
• When not to make noise.
• Who is nice, who is not nice.
• What nice is.
• How to use tools.
• How to fend for ourselves.
• How to “try” to control our emotions.
• How to speak a language

and thousands and thousands of other small skills that add up to being a full-fledged human adult.

A fish has to learn how to swim, eat, not die, and have sex.

Now, some of the reasoning why humans are so dominant in our control of the resources of this planet is our ability to work together, use and make tools and understand language enough that we can read past down knowledge that was learned by dead humans 4000 years ago.

Fruit flies can’t do that.

Heck, even chimpanzees can’t do that.

They have to relearn how to use sticks to capture ants for a snack all the time.

You could imagine, that the time it takes to adjust to the world as a human would then take longer than something that could operate on an almost automatic level.

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Kayla R Mayer, BFA in Illustration, Illustrator for Animation

For example, horses can stand and walk within hours, yet an infant human can’t even hold its own head up, let alone crawl.

If you've ever heard a new born cry, you've just heard it's defense mechanism. You know humans are social creatures, you've heard that a ton. What that means is we survive through cooperation. We're not built to stand or ground totally alone, like a horse getting run down by a wolf pack. We've got a different method. If a predator kills a human, the rest of the humans will hunt the predator, and it's kind, forever.

So babies are loud. They may be an easy meal alone. But what baby gets left alone? Babies can afford to be useless while everyone else takes care of their needs. Other animals can't go the length we can with care and attention. We'll bend the world to a baby's cry.

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Patrick Edwin Moran

Due to the size of the brain, any further growth would probably make for very difficult births. So that’s one reason that the brain can’t mature further in the uterus. Human brains come with much less preprogramming then, e.g., baby chicks that can feed themselves as soon as they can get to their feet.

What isn’t preprogrammed must be learned. Humans need to do things like learning to walk that some other animals can do right away after birth. If their brain has both the plasticity to learn most things, and also the already-formed manual dexterity, ability to walk, etc. of the great apes, then I suppose their heads would have been even larger, and birth would have been very hard on mothers or even deadly.

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Naomi Green

Originally Answered: Why are humans so utterly useless for the first portion of their lives? For example, horses can stand and walk within hours, yet an infant human can’t even hold its own head up, let alone crawl.

It has to do with our brains.

Firstly, we are born premature compared to most mammals, because if we were to wait to reach the same stage of development that horses wait for before we are born, we'd probably kill our mothers with our massive heads.

Secondly, we have extended childhoods, which is the evolutionary drawback for being so smart. We need our longer childhoods for our brains to be able to develop to the level they do. This is both our evolutionary strength and our evolutionary weakness. Other animals might grow up fast and have sharp claws and sharp teeth to survive. They grow up fast so they are less vulnerable to predators.

We grow up slowly so our brains can develop. It makes us more vulnerable to predators and rivals during our childhood, which is one of the reasons evolution rarely takes this route, but as a result, we're the smartest animal on this planet. We negate the risks of our long childhoods by being social animals or pack animals.

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Joel Reid

Humans are born prematurely. if we were carried to full term, that being the point where we could do all those things other animals can do, then we would be born about 6–8 months later. This means a gestation of over 15 months (over a year).

The reason we are born prematurely has to do with our head size, which can not fit out of the birth canal if gestation was 15 months due to human women standing on two legs instead of four. We have to be born early so that our head can fit out without damage to baby or mother. This results in a baby that is capable of basic life functions, but incapable of complex motor skills.

Luckily our evolution has allowed our mothers and babies to have adapted to having birth early and thus the mother will produce milk appropriately and the baby’s organs will be functional enough to digest and breathe.

here is a baby only a few weeks old:

We can see this in Elephants who have a very well developed brain comparable to ourselves, however have a gestation of 22 months (almost 2 years). This gestation is not due solely to size, it is also due to brain and motor development. As you can se ein teh following picture, this baby elephant looks much more developed than a human baby.

Here is a baby 1 year old (effectively if born at an elephants gestation period:

Notice how he is standing?

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David Kincade

As usual these are simply my ideas on the topic and not from textbooks, FWIW so to speak.  Anyway, the upside to long development periods is greater information processing, i.e. learning period. The downside to "not being helpless for so long" like most animals is that they are more hardwired so to speak... instinctual.  We have very long periods of taking environmental information in and making adjustments and changes... much more adaptable to environments (through intelligence).

The difference between sexual and brain maturity is interesting, I can only guess that it was important advantage to be able to have offspring relatively young so as not to die out, yet still be flexible as to environment for much longer?  To be honest I think this is all yet another common sense argument for passing down of acquired information, why do flexible, information gathering, development periods increase as evolution moves on?  If information doesn't get passed down, then what's the point... we would all just reproduce and die. Here is in interesting take on how life works, which fits into your question because the long developmental periods are periods of information collection and change:

David Kincade's answer to What's wrong with the theory of evolution by natural selection? 

Interestingly in ANY case, ignoring the link, information DOES get passed down through society, meaning that one can affect countless offspring with what one does even after he/she has her own... other peoples offspring, through society, culture, media, etc.

Probably more than you bargained for, hope you find interesting.

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Saima Usmani, I like agreeing with people I disagree with

Are we really that helpless? Even before the invention of firearms, we had swords. We had brains complex enough to build fortified structures and set up systems to provide us with food. 

We may not have thick skin, the ability to hold our breath under water, run really fast, ridiculous strength, or flight, but only because we were never forced to develop those things. We were able to think around it; wear furs of other animals, build flotation devices, ride horses, use pulleys and wheels to transport large items. 

Brain=evolutionary advantage. 

I think that means that the best superpower to choose would be super-intelligence over anything else. I guess. But that is another answer for another question.

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Lookman Ali

Well in my point of view the human babies are born with no wisdom.For example lets consider a baby of dog and goat if we put grass in front of the kitty and put meat at front of puppy absolutely they will not eat these foods.Being animals they knows everything of survival,food,shelter etc.But human babies are unaware of eating they will eat anything .The point is that humans have the special ability to gain knowledge by their selves not by natural process.Humans can differentiate between good and bad by the ability of their knowledge.Now a days there is no difference between humans and animals.There are many humans which hate another humans just because of their religion,creed,color,wealth and many other aspects knowing that it is wrong.If you noticed that it is wrong then why you do such things think about it.Please be like humans not animals.

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JJ Grey, Land owner, US Citizen, Gun owner, Lived poor urban + rural

Originally Answered: Why are humans so utterly useless for the first portion of their lives? For example, horses can stand and walk within hours, yet an infant human can’t even hold its own head up, let alone crawl.

Actually my child could hold up their head, and push up their upper torso, and crawl short distances the same day they were born. But admitedly this is FAR less than more vulnerable prey animals can do within hours, or reptiles can do within minutes of hatching. But somehow this thing call maternal care seems to make up for a lot of the difference, and gives other advantages that some introspection may be capable of providing you.

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Ankur Mangla, showing off the leftover knowledge

SHORT ANSWER: Human babies crania (the skull, especially the part enclosing the brain) are actually so small as to be underdeveloped for our species, much more undeveloped then those of other newborn primates.

Human babies compensate by quadrupling brain size after birth. In other words, the brains of newborns grew from about 33 percent of the average adult brain size to 55 percent of it in three months. In contrast, most other primates offspring emerge with pretty developed brain.

The pliable head which allowed the child to safely pass through the birth canal is also responsible for enabling normal human development during the first 18 months of a child’s life. During this period the brain grows rapidly and the skull has to be flexible enough to adapt to its growth.

Human babies are helpless because infants are born with their neural network incomplete. But if human was born with cranium large enough to make it as developed as the brand new deer or ape, its head would be too large to be fit through birth canal.

Compare the elephant and human

Elephant- Infant size= 1/45 of mother and 670 days gestation

Human- Infant size= 1/22 of mother and 266 days gestation

For human baby to emerge as developed as newborn elephant, child would need to be born with cranium the size of one year old, a physical impossibility.

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Marky Tee

I’m not sure they’re quite as helpless but they do mature very quickly. Naturally you won’t be surprised to find that proportionally apes and monkeys also spend more time developing at the “baby” stage (we are one of them after all). This is almost certainly because of brain function and the size of our skulls. In order to make it biologically possible for females to give birth and (hopefully in most cases survive) our brains need to continue to develop after birth. Our skulls take up to a year or more to fuse, and our brains spends at least a decade absorbing life skills to survive to an age when we can start to breed (typically 12–13: puberty). We are (generally) a nurturing species so a baby can usually rely on adults to take care of its basic needs while it continues to develop, which requires sleep and doesn’t involve even walking, let alone running for more than a year after birth (as opposed to the same day for a deer for example).

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Gloria Cole, former Archaeologist, Museum Curator.Taught Anthropology (1969-2004)

Long infant dependency allows for mother-infant and family-infant bonding. It allows time for the brain to grow out side of the uterus preventing many child- mother deaths at birthing. it allows the child to learn bathroom behavior. It allows for socialization of the infant. It allows the child to learn language and relate to other aspects of its environment.

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Anne K. Halsall, mother

Because humans have extremely large brains compared to other species. Human babies gestate for as long as they possibly can before their heads get too large to pass through the birth canal. The rest of their development has to take place outside of the womb.

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Greg Gustafson

Originally Answered: Why are human babies born so helpless in comparison to other animals?

All animals born helpless. One factor that been eluding the others is ARMS. Humans and primates can hold their babies and nurture them for years, while herd animals have to gain mobility fast to keep up with their mothers during travel and migration. Birds have an extended development period because they are in the arms of a protected environment, the nest.

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Omkar Ghanekar, works at Amazon Web Services

Man has been around for millions of years. But why has most of the development and advancements in science been done in last 200 years?

The answer is 'compounding'.

Invest $1 today at 100% interest( if you know a real bank that does this, you let me know, ok?), you have $2 the next year, $4 the year after, $8, $16 in the next years, so on and so forth. As you would have seen, in getting to that $16 value, most value amplification happened in last 2 years; rest of the time, it was building the foundation for the crazy amplification. Similar is the case with all science and technology advancements. All these discoveries are standing on the shoulders of giants. Einstein knew it and so did all other scientists. Human race has come a long way since Home erectus and learnt a lot from its mistakes and worked on fixing them. Einstein could worry about relativity because our ancestors took care of the (caloroes/time spent eating) problem by discovering cooked 

Similar is the case with human babies. Human babies go through a lot of transformation in the first 24 months of their lives. With every experience, neurons in their brain make new connections, repeated experiences strengthen those connections. A 12 month old baby cannot recognise its mirror image as a reflection and assumes its a second baby whereas a 18 month old does. I wonder if even an adult horse can recognise a mirror image as its reflection. Humans have their brain as their strongest weapon and its a darn complex weapon to sharpen. Human babies consume a lot of information from their surrounding in the initial months and try to make sense of it all, something upon which their lives will depend in future. Look at this as compounding process. Maximum amplification will happen in later years but that kind of amplification needs that the trivial and primordial problems be solved first and the stage be set for creating that maximum impact.

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Kanwalpal Singh Flora, Electrical Engineer

Yes, this question has been on my mind for long time, especially when i see wild life documentaries and how deer babies have to start learning how to run within couple of weeks to escape the predators.

On the other hand Humans take years and even couple of decades of guidance and care to reach self sustaining level.

Ofcourse, after that , we(humans) feel we own the world and are all powerful :)

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Ronald J Brown, Retired English teacher, high tech guru and tax specialist

Human babies are born somewhat before they should be because their heads are so big that they’d never fit through the birth canal. It takes a long time for that big brain to process all it needs to until the new creature can look after itself.

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Eric Johnson

Originally Answered: Why are human babies born so helpless in comparison to other animals?

Humans have to be born before Thier body is developed because the head has to pass the birth canal . The BRAIN us already huge in comparison to other animals so it's got to get out early. That's why baby's head us squashy so it can get out then the body gas to catch up.

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Jerry Crespi, CEO Software company, Industrial Psychologist

Originally Answered: Why are human babies so helpless for so long? Why do we take so long to mature physically and psychologically?

The other answers are very good. So I will only point out that humans are not the only animals that do it this way.  Great apes are quite helpless and take long periods to mature. So do elephants and many whales spend a long time under the care of their parents. 

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Jerry Zolan, Active student of life. Always learning.

Humans have evolved to be be born immature. Our heads (and therefore brains) are rather large. If we were to fully mature in the womb, we wouldn’t fit through the birth canal and there would be a high death rate. So we evolved to pop out before our brains have fully grown and our skulls have hardened.

Once we pop out, we are parasitic worthless meat bags until our brains develop. (Some may argue we continue to be parasites indefinitely but that’s a whole different story.)

Anyway, we eventually mature, our brains grow very large and make us one of the smartest species in the world.

Unfortunately it means we are entirely helpless for the first little bit of our life unlike almost every other animal in existence.

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Mark Gouthro, M.S. Biology & Physiology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (1994)

Originally Answered: Why are human babies born so helpless in comparison to other animals?

Ever seen a baby panda? They look pretty helpless. P.S. this question has been asked too many times.

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Mike Dammann, Founder of Date By Type (datebytype.com) - Blood Type Dating

Originally Answered: Why are humans so utterly useless for the first portion of their lives? For example, horses can stand and walk within hours, yet an infant human can’t even hold its own head up, let alone crawl.

It took longer for humans to develop evolutionary speaking. So it takes longer for human infants to develop into full functioning humans.

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Adella Doherty, former Nurse at Hospitals

The extra time that humans need to acquire abilities like lifting their heads without help, taking their first tentative steps at around 1 year old, etc., is part of the evolutionary trade-off for having highly developed brains capable of managing complex reasoning, communication and social interaction, alongside the physical requirements and capabilities of our adult bodies.

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Prasanna Simha M

Originally Answered: Why are babies helpless?

Because they are born relatively early deu to birth constraints and have to complete their development after being born.However do not underestimate the survival instincts of nature. Just check the grip of a new born baby.

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Kshitiz Awadhwal, Doctor, DNB, General Physician

Originally Answered: Why are humans so utterly useless for the first portion of their lives? For example, horses can stand and walk within hours, yet an infant human can’t even hold its own head up, let alone crawl.

They are useful.

Useful to their parents or caretakers. Caretakers realize their ful potential as a human being when such huge responsibility of nurturing a child is bestowed on them.

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Khaled Mohid, Researcher

Somewhere in a long evoloutionary process, a strange and unique development happened.

Standing Upright: After hundreds years of struggle, a species succeeded to stand and walk on two foots and remaining two, started working differently as holding things and making tools etc. After this strange phenomenon, they made homes, started living together and developed language.

Due to all these steps their brains became bigger, sharper and complexed. They won the evolution race but a hazard happened, due to standing straight, walking and running, they got disturbances in female pelvis and baby head ratio. Pelvis was narrower as compared to full growth head of baby in the mother womb, so it became harder to give birth a baby with full developed head.

Birth With Under Developed Head

To counter this, humans started to give birth to babies with under developed head and If it didn't happened, their death rate during childbirth could be dangerously high.

Now After the birth, brain uses more than 40% of total gained energy to grow to its potential size in early one or two years and this extra focus on brain growth resulted at slow learning in psychomotors (action learniing) as eating, speaking, standing and walking etc ..!