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> Why do you have to laboriously teach babies [basic survival things]

Because we are born prematurely. Our brain wouldn’t fit through the birth canal if we were born later with more basic skills baked in. So instead we finish a big part of our early development outside the womb.

Marsupials also use this tactic.

Just put it out in the barn, it'll sleep. Or float it down the river if you think it's caused by demons. People didn't even name their kids for a year even 100 years ago.

Point is that modern child rearing isn't even similar to what we had 3-4 generations ago. The "weak" were weeded out. If you had to choose between the family surviving and dealing with a finicky newborn... compromises were made.

We changed a million things about our environment and a couple of those things turned out to be important.

An interesting thing is not all babies need to be taught this