The Newborn Baby

Question 1

mammalian physiology

Answer 1

• How did mammals survive the nuclear winter - well they developed endothermic, which helps them to function in the colder night temperatures.
  
  • Endothermic - capacity to maintain body temperature at a relatively consistent level in the face of external temperature changes.
  • Endothermy ‘warm-blooded’ - requires high-energy food, thermoregulatory adaptions (fur)
  • Live birth:
  • Mammary glands
  • Adaptions for nursing
  • Protection from predators
  • Signalling behaviours (crying)
    · Parenting is as a consequence of the evolutionary adaptations leading to endothermic and light of birth.

Question 2

Evolution of mammals

Answer 2

• Depiction of mammal diversity at the Mesozoic/Cenozoic boundary (i.e., centred at 65 million years ago).
  
  • The number of different basic types of mammals (orders) is clearly larger after the extinction event than before. Is an example of an adaptive radiation, where organisms suddenly diversify while adapting to new or recently vacated ecological niches.
  • Our order, Primates, is highlighted.

Question 3

primates

Answer 3

· Parenting poses similar kinds of challenges to both humans and nonhumans
· Only about 140 species of primates
· Nowadays there are an excess of 700 different species
· Human and other primate infants exhibit similar behavioural repertoires.
· They have the same sorts of needs, and they elicit broadly the same kind of parenting behaviours from birth and then throughout infancy and into the juvenile period.

Question 4

primate infants considered in relation to other mammals

Answer 4

· Primates are precocious (advanced) at birth relative to many other mammals in that we are born with eyes and ears open, our brains have almost all of the neurons they will have in adulthood, and we are modestly more advanced in locomotor capabilities compared to, say, kangaroos, who develop considerably in their mothers’ pouches after they’re born, but obviously not as advanced as, say, horses, who can be up and gamboling about the meadows within an hour of birth.
· Primates have extremely long juvenile epochs, relative to most other mammals, being dependent upon their mothers for years, in some cases.
· The long juvenile stage entails a postponed reproductive maturity, relative to other mammals.

Question 5

primate infants considered in relation to other mammals

Answer 5

precocious (advanced):
- eyes and ears are not sealed shut (compare: carnivoeres, rodents)
- neural cell proliferation nearly complete at birth (compare: rats ~25%)
- moderately rapid locomotor development (not as fast as ungulates, faster than marsupials)
altricial (slowly developing):
- dependent upon mothers up to 4 years
very extended juvenile life stage, hence very delayed adolescence

Question 6

sensory capabilities of newborns

Answer 6

· Touch - pain, pressure, proprioception, temperature
· Balance - vestibular system
· Smell
· Taste - salt, bitter, sweet, sour
· Hearing - lower frequencies; ability to localise sounds improves over the first 7 years of life
· Vision - about 20/400 at birth; improves to 20/20 at about 6 months

Question 7

neonatal behaviour repertoires