10 Quirks Of Evolution That Are Ruining Your Life

Hey speaking of horrible reproduction, what the hell is up with childbirth?

Most of the animal kingdom can merrily gallop about, running away from predators and eating grass until they're basically in labour, whereupon they will drop a litter in the middle of the night and they will all be on their feet in time for breakfast. So it doesn't seem fair that human childbirth can be such an arduous, painful and deadly process.

And to cap it all off, when we do eventually get the baby out, it's a gibbering idiot for the first few years of its life. What gives?

This is what is known as the Obstetrical Dilemma.

When humans first went from walking on four legs to walking on two legs, the shape of our pelvis changed in order to accommodate our new-found bipedalism. This happened at roughly the same time as we were developing our big, clever brains, meaning that our heads had to get bigger in order to accommodate them. The two events could even be related, as walking on two legs freed up our hands for tool-making and communication, gradually transforming us into a thinking species.

Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that it's now a right old squeeze to get the bonny babe's bonce out of your foof. So much so that we actually have to give birth to our young before they're quite finished, otherwise their heads would be even bigger and they would just split their mothers down the middle.

This means that their underdeveloped brains cause them to loll about uselessly for months after birth, compared to the newborn lamb that is happily gambolling about the field within minutes.