3 ms·
The question of why humans cry is always fascinating, since it's such an instinctive behavior we don't seem to realize how bizarre it is. I tried a little to de
by bbctol 10y ago
The question of why humans cry is always fascinating, since it's such an instinctive behavior we don't seem to realize how bizarre it is. I tried a little to develop a deliberately insane theory to submit to BAHfest (SMBC's festival of bad scientific hypotheses http://www.bahfest.com http://www.bahfest.com) and proposed that crying exists to blind us during periods of great emotional stress, since we'd otherwise be prone to irrational and dangerous behavior. Unfortunately, compared with the real attempts to explain tears, it seemed a little too plausible to be bad! When the state of research has someone proposing "we cry because of the soot flying into our eyes at prehistoric funeral pyres," it's hard to be deliberately weird. (I eventually came up with a much funnier topic, so swing by if you're in the area shameless plug etc)
- ygaf 10y agoWho doesn't want that trophy?
- tbabb 10y agoTo be fair, I think the soot hypothesis is so terrible it would fit right in at BAHfest. Frankly I'm astonished it has any credibility whatsoever, and if it does, it would severely dim my view of the entire field.
- VLM 10y agoAcross species eye contact is a thing for both carnivore/herbivore dynamics and also dominance hierarchies so if you intentionally wanted to create a weird theory I'd suggest mixing those in weird ways. So if a hunter gets hurt while hunting he could screw up the hunt for everyone by being hurt except for crying messes up his eye to eye stare down so he temporarily falls to the bottom of the dominance hierarchy allowing the overall tribe better luck hunting and more meat for everyone including himself, therefore cry in pain, in the long run equals more delicious meat. Stalking being more a carnivore behavior than herbivore I'd theorize crying is extremely manly and women carried the trait originally rather than directly benefiting by expressing the trait. The vegan types can be very vociferous when presented with commentary about the biology of the human body appearing to have evolved to support meat eating, so be careful, its very politically incorrect to look into things like cross species carnivore eye contact behaviors or apparently evolutionary evidence of stalking and hunting biological technologies.
- bbctol 10y agoWhat's the worst that can happen from a vociferous vegan?