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Pregnancy is, it seems, just another (evolutionary) war. https://aeon.co/essays/why-pregnancy-is-a-biological-war-between-mother-and-baby https://aeon.co/essay

Pregnancy is, it seems, just another (evolutionary) war. https://aeon.co/essays/why-pregnancy-is-a-biological-war-between-mother-and-baby https://aeon.co/essays/why-pregnancy-is-a-biological-war-bet... Red in tooth and claw at every layer, from the smallest cell to the entire biosphere.

sitkack 1y ago
> It’s no accident that many of the same genes active in embryonic development have been implicated in cancer. Pregnancy is a lot more like war than we might care to admit. Amazing article. Another reason that hardshelled laid eggs are such a great invention. The offspring can do its thing from a safe distance.
- andai 1y ago
  The article suggests the external egg also limits the creature to a small brain.
  - nine_k 1y ago
    Birds, the inheritors of the venerable Dinosaur brand, managed to both produce very large eggs (e.g. ostriches), and impressively capable brains, rivaling those of larger mammalians (e.g. parrots, corvids), interestingly, without the use of very large eggs.
    - c22 1y ago
      Okay, crows are impressive. But I'm not going to let one do my taxes.
      - geenkeuse 1y ago
        [dead]
      - throw-qqqqq 1y ago
        The crow wouldn’t let you build its nest either ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
        mort96 1y ago
        No, but humans would be capable of making something which could serve as a crow's nest, while a crow wouldn't be able to do taxes if we let it...
        throw-qqqqq 1y ago
        Are you sure? I would be very surprised if a human could build a nest that a crow would accept unaltered. Most birds’ nests are built much more intricately than just a pile of sticks thrown together! Usually built from layers of different materials, sometimes weaved or plastered with mud/clay/bird-spit. E.g. sparrows pick up lavender in my garden, because the oils repel some pests etc.
      - thih9 1y ago
        Not doing taxes is a plus for corvids in my book. Seriously, you picked one of the least impressive human activities. Makes me think about my potential reincarnation choices. Crows fly, mate for life and are considered positive for the ecosystem. Humans do taxes.
    - ekianjo 1y ago
      Still nothing remotely close to a human brain.
      - alganet 1y ago
        That seems about right according to research. There are many articles about bird intelligence available from multiple sources. A more open minded perspective would instead try to look to what is "remotely close" to a human brain. Although primates can't quite communicate like humans, they are known for being our closest relatives in scientific biological terms. I know I am deviating from the birds subject a little, but stick with me. I need to address the "remotely close" expression you used. Primates can display what humans would recognize as human behavior. Work in groups, social dynamics, use of simple tools. The "looks like human" effect could be explained by anthropomorphization performed by those very humans (to put it simply: an effect where humans see human features in non human things). In fact, some behaviors considered as human are not commonly displayed by primates, like the ability to keep a pet. There is no clear definitive answer to it, and any dismissal of such behaviors could be also used to dismiss humans themselves, therefore I must refrain from entertaining them too much. Birds also show a lot of human like behavior. Like the ability to gather objects (to construct a nest and to attract a partner are common examples). Remember, the closest thing to humans in anatomy and biology (primates) is not very much different from birds in terms of "how it presents human-like" behavior. So, as a counter argument, I would ask: what makes the difference of thinking between a primate and a bird so different to you? Is it their anatomy that prevents you from anthropomorphizing it so readily? Or do you also think primate brains are "nothing remotely close to a human brain"? It cannot be denied that "closeness" is a loose definition and could generate endless discussion. I tried to concede a little bit to find a reasonable common ground that is both based on rational thinking and a little bit of open mindedness. Under such criteria, I can assert that birds might be much more intelligent than previously assumed.
        disqard 1y ago
        Thoughtful (and thought-provoking) comments like yours are why I frequent this site. Thank you, stranger! For my part, I'll add that "Humans are visual creatures", which biases every aspect of our culture -- and might help explain why many would consider other primates "closer" to us than birds.
    - __s 1y ago
      Also amazing with birds is how effectively they've evolved intelligence with a small brain https://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-06-term-bird-brain.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-06-term-bird-brain.html
      - sitkack 1y ago
        We overfocus on brain volume, when we should be calculating the number of neurons and neuron size varies wildly. I can't find the original video, but Suzana Herculano-Houzel developed a technique to measure total neuron counts by liquefying the brain and then counting the cell nucleus density / volume. WSU Master Class: Big Brains, Small Brains with Suzana Herculano-Houzel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDM3TcfGoBY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDM3TcfGoBY (nice short popsci intro) The woman who turns brains into soup: Suzana Herculano-Houzel https://youtu.be/d2Uhv0_Ji1k?t=362 https://youtu.be/d2Uhv0_Ji1k?t=362 (talks about racoon and bird brains) https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2017/09/07/brainiac-with-her-innovative-brain-soup-suzana-herculano-houzel-is-changing-neuroscience-one-species-at-a-time/ https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2017/09/07/brainiac-with-her-inn... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=Suzana%20Herculano-Houzel%20&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... This paper is really fun, "Brains matter, bodies maybe not: the case for examining neuron numbers irrespective of body size" https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Brains-matter%2C-bodies-maybe-not%3A-the-case-for-of-Herculano%E2%80%90Houzel/ea34224601c81828afeefc29522d98375233d355 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Brains-matter%2C-bodie...
      - pragma_x 1y ago
        It's something to marvel at, really. Birds _needed_ to evolve super efficient brains due to all the constraints that flight puts on the organism; they have to be more efficient by weight as well as by size. Meanwhile, being earthbound like you or I lets our DNA get away with a lot more slop.
petermcneeley 1y ago
The baby probably does not benefit from the death of the mother.
- tgv 1y ago
  But some form of evolution might make it a local optimum. It would at least require 3 or more offspring per pregnancy, and could not happen in mammals, though.
  - petermcneeley 1y ago
    Much harder than that. All mammals drink milk.
    - worik 1y ago
      > All mammals drink milk. I don't
      - ben_w 1y ago
        If that was true when you were an infant, you're part of an extreme minority. You would not have survived more than a few weeks past birth in the absence of modern medical interventions — well, that part at least was true for most of us — but specifically an inability to process milk as an infant is very rare, precisely because "mammary" is what puts the "mam" in "mammal".
        thaumasiotes 1y ago
        > precisely because "mammary" is what puts the "mam" in "mammal" It puts the "mamm" in; that second m is also part of the root.
        c22 1y ago
        As is the third m.
andai 1y ago
My uncle said yesterday that man's harsh nature goes back to Rome: Homo homini lupus. The article says it goes back a lot further than Rome! > So if it’s a fight, what started it? The original bone of contention is this: you and your nearest relatives are not genetically identical. In the nature of things, this means that you are in competition. And because you live in the same environment, your closest relations are actually your most immediate rivals.
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  > My uncle said yesterday that man's harsh nature goes back to Rome: Homo homini lupus. What's "homini" supposed to mean?
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    Homini is the dative of homo, meaning roughly "to (a) man". The phrase is a latin proverb meaning, roughly, "A man is a wolf to another man".
  - azmodeus 1y ago
    Man man’s wolf Homo homini lupus
  - n3storm 1y ago
    Homo homini lupus is the latin for "Man is wolf for man", famous quote from Plautus. Homini is the declination of Homo, is dative case. I don't know how to properly translate dative to english, something like "to give". I know this from Philosophy and Latin (separate) in Highschool around the nineties in Spain. They both were compulsory global subjects. I think Latin is not compulsory this days.
    - thaumasiotes 1y ago
      > famous quote from Plautus The quote from Plautus appears to be lupus est homo homini, which is much easier to parse. There's a verb and everything. (I didn't know that; I just looked it up.) > I don't know how to properly translate dative to english, something like "to give". Yes, the word literally means "giving [case]", but the grammatical concept in English is generally called "indirect object". English mostly doesn't have cases, so supplemental arguments to verbs tend to be marked by associated prepositions, making them "indirect". When talking about Latin specifically or languages with noun case in general, it is normal in English to refer to the "dative case"; you don't really need to translate it. I assume the case was named after the action of giving because giving is a very common action that necessarily involves three things. (Giver, gift, and recipient.) The name tells you what it means by example: "if a gift is given, the dative case is the one you'd use for the recipient".
Barrin92 1y ago
what an odd coincidence to see David Haig mentioned in the article. I just stumbled over his interview on Sean Carroll's podcast a few days ago, discussing the exact same topic (https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/11/30/125-david-haig-on-the-evolution-of-meaning-from-darwin-to-derrida/ https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/11/30/125-...) "And so while the cooperative outcome would be the most efficient, you lead to a situation in which there are conflict costs, and I think this explains why things go wrong so often during pregnancy. Of course, at first sight it's strange, my heart and my liver have been functioning very well for for 62 years, and yet during pregnancy, you have a natural process that only lasts for nine months, and yet many things go wrong during it. And I would argue that the reason why pregnancy doesn't work as smoothly as the normal functioning of the body is that in normal bodily functioning all the parts of the body are genetically identical to each other and working towards survival of that body, but in pregnancy, you have two different genetic individuals interacting with each other and natural selection can act at cross-purposes, there's a sort of politics going on, and we know that politics does not always lead to efficient outcomes."
xg15 1y ago
> Pregnancy is, it seems, just another (evolutionary) war. I think this is a useful insight even on a higher level. For evolution (if you want to anthropomorphize it), war and conflict are just another set of tools in the toolbox. Where humans see those as evidence of something going wrong and evil to eradicated, for evolution it's "working as intended". (Or, if you don't want to anthropomorphize it, an indication how much of evolution and biology is just barely tamed chaos) (Careful to draw conclusions for human society from this though. People in the past had already seen the Darwinian "struggle between the species" as a model for society, which brought "Social Darwinism" and ultimately the Nazi ideology. A different conclusion would be that biology is in fact not a perfect ideal to aspire to, and even in the situations where it "works", its factual objectives are not always the same as ours. Which does give legitimacy for the endeavor to improve upon it - for everyone)

sitkack 1y ago

> It’s no accident that many of the same genes active in embryonic development have been implicated in cancer. Pregnancy is a lot more like war than we might care to admit. Amazing article. Another reason that hardshelled laid eggs are such a great invention. The offspring can do its thing from a safe distance.

andai 1y ago
The article suggests the external egg also limits the creature to a small brain.
- nine_k 1y ago
  Birds, the inheritors of the venerable Dinosaur brand, managed to both produce very large eggs (e.g. ostriches), and impressively capable brains, rivaling those of larger mammalians (e.g. parrots, corvids), interestingly, without the use of very large eggs.
  - c22 1y ago
    Okay, crows are impressive. But I'm not going to let one do my taxes.
    - geenkeuse 1y ago
      [dead]
    - throw-qqqqq 1y ago
      The crow wouldn’t let you build its nest either ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
      - mort96 1y ago
        No, but humans would be capable of making something which could serve as a crow's nest, while a crow wouldn't be able to do taxes if we let it...
        throw-qqqqq 1y ago
        Are you sure? I would be very surprised if a human could build a nest that a crow would accept unaltered. Most birds’ nests are built much more intricately than just a pile of sticks thrown together! Usually built from layers of different materials, sometimes weaved or plastered with mud/clay/bird-spit. E.g. sparrows pick up lavender in my garden, because the oils repel some pests etc.
    - thih9 1y ago
      Not doing taxes is a plus for corvids in my book. Seriously, you picked one of the least impressive human activities. Makes me think about my potential reincarnation choices. Crows fly, mate for life and are considered positive for the ecosystem. Humans do taxes.
  - ekianjo 1y ago
    Still nothing remotely close to a human brain.
    - alganet 1y ago
      That seems about right according to research. There are many articles about bird intelligence available from multiple sources. A more open minded perspective would instead try to look to what is "remotely close" to a human brain. Although primates can't quite communicate like humans, they are known for being our closest relatives in scientific biological terms. I know I am deviating from the birds subject a little, but stick with me. I need to address the "remotely close" expression you used. Primates can display what humans would recognize as human behavior. Work in groups, social dynamics, use of simple tools. The "looks like human" effect could be explained by anthropomorphization performed by those very humans (to put it simply: an effect where humans see human features in non human things). In fact, some behaviors considered as human are not commonly displayed by primates, like the ability to keep a pet. There is no clear definitive answer to it, and any dismissal of such behaviors could be also used to dismiss humans themselves, therefore I must refrain from entertaining them too much. Birds also show a lot of human like behavior. Like the ability to gather objects (to construct a nest and to attract a partner are common examples). Remember, the closest thing to humans in anatomy and biology (primates) is not very much different from birds in terms of "how it presents human-like" behavior. So, as a counter argument, I would ask: what makes the difference of thinking between a primate and a bird so different to you? Is it their anatomy that prevents you from anthropomorphizing it so readily? Or do you also think primate brains are "nothing remotely close to a human brain"? It cannot be denied that "closeness" is a loose definition and could generate endless discussion. I tried to concede a little bit to find a reasonable common ground that is both based on rational thinking and a little bit of open mindedness. Under such criteria, I can assert that birds might be much more intelligent than previously assumed.
      - disqard 1y ago
        Thoughtful (and thought-provoking) comments like yours are why I frequent this site. Thank you, stranger! For my part, I'll add that "Humans are visual creatures", which biases every aspect of our culture -- and might help explain why many would consider other primates "closer" to us than birds.
  - __s 1y ago
    Also amazing with birds is how effectively they've evolved intelligence with a small brain https://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-06-term-bird-brain.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-06-term-bird-brain.html
    - sitkack 1y ago
      We overfocus on brain volume, when we should be calculating the number of neurons and neuron size varies wildly. I can't find the original video, but Suzana Herculano-Houzel developed a technique to measure total neuron counts by liquefying the brain and then counting the cell nucleus density / volume. WSU Master Class: Big Brains, Small Brains with Suzana Herculano-Houzel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDM3TcfGoBY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDM3TcfGoBY (nice short popsci intro) The woman who turns brains into soup: Suzana Herculano-Houzel https://youtu.be/d2Uhv0_Ji1k?t=362 https://youtu.be/d2Uhv0_Ji1k?t=362 (talks about racoon and bird brains) https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2017/09/07/brainiac-with-her-innovative-brain-soup-suzana-herculano-houzel-is-changing-neuroscience-one-species-at-a-time/ https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2017/09/07/brainiac-with-her-inn... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=Suzana%20Herculano-Houzel%20&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... This paper is really fun, "Brains matter, bodies maybe not: the case for examining neuron numbers irrespective of body size" https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Brains-matter%2C-bodies-maybe-not%3A-the-case-for-of-Herculano%E2%80%90Houzel/ea34224601c81828afeefc29522d98375233d355 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Brains-matter%2C-bodie...
    - pragma_x 1y ago
      It's something to marvel at, really. Birds _needed_ to evolve super efficient brains due to all the constraints that flight puts on the organism; they have to be more efficient by weight as well as by size. Meanwhile, being earthbound like you or I lets our DNA get away with a lot more slop.

petermcneeley 1y ago

The baby probably does not benefit from the death of the mother.

tgv 1y ago
But some form of evolution might make it a local optimum. It would at least require 3 or more offspring per pregnancy, and could not happen in mammals, though.
- petermcneeley 1y ago
  Much harder than that. All mammals drink milk.
  - worik 1y ago
    > All mammals drink milk. I don't
    - ben_w 1y ago
      If that was true when you were an infant, you're part of an extreme minority. You would not have survived more than a few weeks past birth in the absence of modern medical interventions — well, that part at least was true for most of us — but specifically an inability to process milk as an infant is very rare, precisely because "mammary" is what puts the "mam" in "mammal".
      - thaumasiotes 1y ago
        > precisely because "mammary" is what puts the "mam" in "mammal" It puts the "mamm" in; that second m is also part of the root.
        c22 1y ago
        As is the third m.

andai 1y ago

My uncle said yesterday that man's harsh nature goes back to Rome: Homo homini lupus. The article says it goes back a lot further than Rome! > So if it’s a fight, what started it? The original bone of contention is this: you and your nearest relatives are not genetically identical. In the nature of things, this means that you are in competition. And because you live in the same environment, your closest relations are actually your most immediate rivals.

thaumasiotes 1y ago
> My uncle said yesterday that man's harsh nature goes back to Rome: Homo homini lupus. What's "homini" supposed to mean?
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  Homini is the dative of homo, meaning roughly "to (a) man". The phrase is a latin proverb meaning, roughly, "A man is a wolf to another man".
- azmodeus 1y ago
  Man man’s wolf Homo homini lupus
- n3storm 1y ago
  Homo homini lupus is the latin for "Man is wolf for man", famous quote from Plautus. Homini is the declination of Homo, is dative case. I don't know how to properly translate dative to english, something like "to give". I know this from Philosophy and Latin (separate) in Highschool around the nineties in Spain. They both were compulsory global subjects. I think Latin is not compulsory this days.
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    > famous quote from Plautus The quote from Plautus appears to be lupus est homo homini, which is much easier to parse. There's a verb and everything. (I didn't know that; I just looked it up.) > I don't know how to properly translate dative to english, something like "to give". Yes, the word literally means "giving [case]", but the grammatical concept in English is generally called "indirect object". English mostly doesn't have cases, so supplemental arguments to verbs tend to be marked by associated prepositions, making them "indirect". When talking about Latin specifically or languages with noun case in general, it is normal in English to refer to the "dative case"; you don't really need to translate it. I assume the case was named after the action of giving because giving is a very common action that necessarily involves three things. (Giver, gift, and recipient.) The name tells you what it means by example: "if a gift is given, the dative case is the one you'd use for the recipient".

Barrin92 1y ago

what an odd coincidence to see David Haig mentioned in the article. I just stumbled over his interview on Sean Carroll's podcast a few days ago, discussing the exact same topic (https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/11/30/125-david-haig-on-the-evolution-of-meaning-from-darwin-to-derrida/ https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/11/30/125-...) "And so while the cooperative outcome would be the most efficient, you lead to a situation in which there are conflict costs, and I think this explains why things go wrong so often during pregnancy. Of course, at first sight it's strange, my heart and my liver have been functioning very well for for 62 years, and yet during pregnancy, you have a natural process that only lasts for nine months, and yet many things go wrong during it. And I would argue that the reason why pregnancy doesn't work as smoothly as the normal functioning of the body is that in normal bodily functioning all the parts of the body are genetically identical to each other and working towards survival of that body, but in pregnancy, you have two different genetic individuals interacting with each other and natural selection can act at cross-purposes, there's a sort of politics going on, and we know that politics does not always lead to efficient outcomes."

xg15 1y ago

> Pregnancy is, it seems, just another (evolutionary) war. I think this is a useful insight even on a higher level. For evolution (if you want to anthropomorphize it), war and conflict are just another set of tools in the toolbox. Where humans see those as evidence of something going wrong and evil to eradicated, for evolution it's "working as intended". (Or, if you don't want to anthropomorphize it, an indication how much of evolution and biology is just barely tamed chaos) (Careful to draw conclusions for human society from this though. People in the past had already seen the Darwinian "struggle between the species" as a model for society, which brought "Social Darwinism" and ultimately the Nazi ideology. A different conclusion would be that biology is in fact not a perfect ideal to aspire to, and even in the situations where it "works", its factual objectives are not always the same as ours. Which does give legitimacy for the endeavor to improve upon it - for everyone)