8 Basic Functions That Humans Totally Fail At
You'd think after 200,000 years we'd be able to give birth or poop properly, but no.
Ah, humans, aren't we clever? We've been moulded and primed over millions of years of evolution into the temple-building, space-faring, technologically advanced apex predators that we are. So why do we sometimes go into the kitchen and forget why we're there?
It turns out that evolution is not the perfect process we would have hoped, and that there are some infuriatingly simple things that we just plain suck at. Evolution is less of a steady progression to perfection and more of a "wing and a prayer, trial and error, let's just try things out and see what sticks" kind of deal. In fact, there are many examples of other, "simpler" species that far outstrip us in certain fields.
Ironically, some of the things that we're bad at are actually a result of our technological advancement. The human brain evolved when we were hunting on the open plains of Africa, not checking our emails on the tube, and so far hasn't really had much time to make its adjustments. Our lifestyles have developed way quicker than our poor old brains and we have achieved the evolutionary equivalent of sticking your great-great granddad in the cockpit of a Boeing 747 and telling him to fly it.
So, ready to find out how much you suck at stuff? Always fun.
9. Giving Birth
How is it that most of the animal kingdom can seemingly pop a sprog out at the drop of a hat, but human childbirth require hours of excruciating pain, half a dozen trained professionals and a lot of shouting at your significant other?
The difficulty, danger and pain that women face during childbirth is due to something called the obstetric dilemma. This refers to the conflict between two evolutionary developments in humans.
The first is the shift to bipedalism that led to the narrowing of the pelvis and therefore restricting the birth canal, to allow us to walk on two legs. The second is the increase in head size as humans evolved to be more and more intelligent. It is because of these two factors that humans need more assistance in childbirth, but, luckily enough, we evolved enough socially to mean that we're capable of that too.
This is also the reason why babies are cute-yet-useless blobs of blubber when they are born. Most animals will be up and running away from lions within minutes of birth, but humans require literally years of training to get up to speed. This is because we are born with completely underdeveloped brains to allow us even the remotest chance of squeezing ourselves out of our poor, long-suffering mothers.