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gazelle can run with the herd the day after it’s born. An elephant can walk before its first meal, since that’s how it gets to the nipple. A fish is an orphan from birth because its parents swim off once the eggs are fertilized.
A premature chimp is not capable of holding on to its mother as she swings through the trees the way a full-term baby chimp can. A newborn human is like a premature chimp with a much bigger brain. Our brains kept growing bigger as our ancestors succeeded at getting more protein and fat.
A chimpanzee is born with eyes and limbs that are ready to go. Humans
When a newborn human sees a hand flying in front of her face, she does not know she’s attached to that hand, no less that she can control
A newborn doesn’t cry as a conscious act of communication.
It cries because that’s one of our few prewired circuits.
It stops crying before its needs are actually met because it has linke...
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A synapse is the gap between one neuron and the next. The electricity in your brain only flows if it reaches the end of a neuron with enough force to jump across that gap.
It’s as if the tip of each neuron has a fleet of rowboats ready to ferry an electrical spark across the synapse to specially fitted docks on the next neuron.
For electricity to cross a synapse, the dendrite on one side must release a chemical that arrives at a receptor on the other side.
Each of our brain chemicals has a complex shape that fits its own special receptors the way a key fits a lock.
Chimps are not born preprogrammed with necessary survival knowledge. Their mothers invest five years in each child before reproducing again.
Every creature in nature runs on as few neurons as possible because neurons are metabolically expensive. They consume more oxygen and glucose than an active muscle.
A mouse is a parent by the time it’s two months old. A giraffe “hits the ground running” because it crashes four feet from the womb to the ground, and in a few weeks it can do almost everything an adult can do. Primates have a very long childhood
A monkey’s childhood is about three times as long as a gazelle’s. An ape’s childhood is triple that of a monkey. A human childhood triples an ape’s.
