Discern Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 In one documentary on evolution they were noting how the increase in human brain size caused women to give birth before the baby's head was too big to fit through the female pelvis. Essentially resulting in human babies being born premature compared to other animals, and requiring intense nurturing after birth. If that's the case, why didn't the female pelvis evolve to be wider to accommodate the baby? Wouldn't natural selection favor women with wider pelvises especially given the sheer amount of complications humans have during birth? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LivingLife Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 This is not a stump question. Females have wider hips/pelvis than males. Take some phrases from your post and right click and google. The answers are all there and scientific. We all start of as female and that is why men have useless nipples, same with other mammals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 In one documentary on evolution they were noting how the increase in human brain size caused women to give birth before the baby's head was too big to fit through the female pelvis. Essentially resulting in human babies being born premature compared to other animals, and requiring intense nurturing after birth. If that's the case, why didn't the female pelvis evolve to be wider to accommodate the baby? Wouldn't natural selection favor women with wider pelvises especially given the sheer amount of complications humans have during birth? Evolution is not intelligent. Many steps in the evolutionary process are not the best solutions in a larger perspective. Mutations are mostly kept on a micro-scale of cost-benefit. A wider pelvis would most definitely have been better, but then, also consider that a fetus with larger brain would be larger and demand more nutrients, so the mother would have to be larger too (the mother stores extra calories during pregnancy), and so on. So wider pelvic isn't a best solution either. Evolution just does things that are not planned. The laryngeal nerve is an example of how evolution doesn't care how it does it, but just applies short-term cost-benefits to mutations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Positivist Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 I know what you're saying. You'd think Mother Nature/Evolution would have gotten its act together and made this work a little better. No wonder people made up myths to explain it (a la Genesis, talking snakes, apples...). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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