Babies
 

I was holding my four day old nephew in my arms for the first time. I couldn't get it out of my head, wondering how exactly humans survived to this day. Compared to most babies, he is very quiet and not very bothersome (he still craps himself and makes inappropriate advanced on my sister). But overall, not a whiner. But still. He still lacks the basic functions of survival that most animals have. Discuss.

Well, babies don't have to survive on their own. That's what parents do. This is our strategy.

And if we want to go ever so slightly out group, most marsupials are similar. Completely useless upon birth.

Well, it's like Power-leveling in RPs. Every baby may be weak and vulnerable, but it has two level-40 adults taking care of it, one of whom is typically a warrior, the other being more of a healer. They supply the baby with potions and pretty much train it until it has the neccessary feats, attributes and skills to do a few solo quests.

Human parents are among the best parents known to nature, I think.

Yeah, the shittyer the parent, the more capable the kid. Baby snakes are deadly venomous out of the egg.

Not really. There is the alternative strategy of crappy parenting and helpless young. In which case the parents just have about 80 billion of them at a time and by pure chance enough make it to adulthood to keep the species going. This is the strategy of all most everything that lives in the Ocean than isn't a mammal.

Yeah, but, Fuck squids.

It's not just squids. Octopi, basically any kind of mollusk, basically any fish that lays eggs, turtles, coral of course, lobsters, crabs, jellyfish, etc. Moving onto land we've got spiders, flies, various beetles, butterflies and mouths, basically any insect that isn't communal, and while most reptiles don't do it to quite the degree of other creatures they do tend to lay a crap ton of eggs and basically hope for the best. All and all I'd say the having tons of babies at once approach is basically the most popular and successful multicellular reproductive approach. Not only does it remove the need for parenting it takes genetic diversity even within a single generation to it's maximum while virtually guaranteeing only the most suitable genes survive. (While also making sure the genes can in fact survive in the first place.) It truly is the best possible way to have babies.

Must you make a thing out of everything? seriously.

Nope I just sound exactly the same when being serious and when not being serious. I suppose inflection would help but I'm not sure how much exactly.

Edit: I suppose I make a great straightman though. Although I have to say you're not holding up your end all that well.

you could talk less.....
Try it sometime...we might enjoy it.
nah, it's all love, baby

Sith's right. It's the same thinking behind the 100% successful debate strategy- when they start talking, you start punching. Nature gives us the tools we need. :D

We should really stay in the womb for about 16-20 years to be born as physiologically developed as most lower animals. But that's the price we have to pay for our oversized heads.

Is it really? I agree with what you've said about genetic diversity, this maximises the... well speed of an organism's evolution, the number of generations required for said organism to adapt to new external conditions...
But the best?

What is the definition of best? Which species is most likely to survive in the long term (Meaning evolutionary long term. Meaning a really long fucking time.)? Neither... one isn't sufficiently capable of adapting due to having too few offspring, too few generations, the other's much more likely of having speciation occur, thus that species'd be gone as well.

Lets just say squid, octopi, other mollusks, jellyfish, etc. Have all been here much longer and in relatively unchanged forms than basically any other multicellular life.

Maybe so, but you couldn't truly judge which strategy is "better" before the end of all life as we know it, basically.

Yes, but as you said, (and I agreed) that .

The fact that they've remained unchanged rather seems to indicate that they haven't needed to adapt to a new environment (possibly due to all the ocean they live in) rather than the fact that their method of reproduction is somehow superior...

Though I wonder... would the high-devotion, low-number strategy humans seem to use be more likely to achieve more complex life?

In other words, if we reproduced like Starcraft players Zergling-rush, would we have been capable of the kind of intelligence neccessary to use tools, discover nuclear fusion and use that nuclear fusion to kill other people?

These are really just hypothetical questions. And for once pseudo-scientific debate that's on-topic.

Qi determined that the most successful form of life is bacteria. They far outstrip all other living things combined in both numbers, resilience, adaptability and range of withstandable environments.

Here's your problem. We are not more complex by a long shot. Genetically speaking I know plants far surpass us in terms of useful genes as well as structures. (Photosynthesizing isn't easy and yet they do it and still manage to communicate with each other and respond to stimuli like light without anything we'd really call a nervous system.) Really plants are the ultimate in multicellular billions of baby producers.

See above. Also, as great as intellect is Jellyfish would probably still out survive us as will cockroaches and various other insects. Technically speaking we aren't all that well adapted nor complex. We're just bigger and smarter than most things. Between that and a healthy dose of arrogance we've convinced ourselves we're more complex. Really our brain is only marginally more complex than say a chimps and overall we're not really all that genetically complex when compared to a tree.

Or that they rapidly achieved a design that with slight modifications allows them to survive so well in such a wide range of conditions they haven't needed to change. Which makes us look rather pitiful in comparison with our rather narrow range of suitable conditions. That and our intellect with all it's great advances has arguably made us less likely to survive a cataclysm that takes it away.

One must also remember that genetic diversity isn't all about evolution. It also keeps a population from regressing or contracting genetic disorders. Also, it would conceivably allow them to come back very quickly from a near extinction once the pressure was removed with minimal genetic damage. Lets see humans do that.

Which is why I carefully limited my statement to multicellular life. Although I should have been more specific in stating macroscopic multicellular life. Everything smaller is a whole other kettle of fish.

They've been here longer, through several extinctions in fact, and they out weigh/number us. I'd say their winning at least and have a good shot at taking the whole show eventually.

It's not a competition.

That's loser talk!

Hurrah for K-selection! Frankly, we probably wouldn't have developed big brains if we hadn't had parental investment

On the other hand, cephalopods just spray eggs everywhere, live for only a few years and die after mating anyway. They are also chameleonic, shapechanging alien creatures of frightening intelligence. We could be in trouble!

All I'm saying is if it came down to humans fighting the jellyfish we could so eradicate those suckers. A coordinated global attack on the ocean, using every resource we have, should poison/destroy the oceans enough to kill the jellies. They can live in water where no other organisms can live but they need water to survive.
Sure we would die as well, but we just need to sequester enough water to not die first.

Plan 2 is mass breeding of the jellyfishes natural enemy- the seaturtle. Or possibly genetic engineering of manturtles.

If all you care about is genetic diversity.

Personally, I kind of like the fact that I'm more like a hand-sculpted, one of a kind, masterpiece as opposed to something made with a shitty cookie cutter.

Cookies are awesome though.

Well.... you SHOULDN'T
 

Counterpoint: You can't eat babies.

I'm going to arm my daughter with NES controllers to use as weapons when she comes out, should be any freakin day now, goddamn thing is being stubborn. Wont come out, will kick the wife into submission but doesn't want to escape the womb for freedom.

Says you.

It's true! As long as we ignore all the changes they've gone through for millions of years. Common misconception, same with sharks etc.

Though Sith is totally still right. Sponges got it right the first time, and forever after that.

Sponges can't learn Kung-fu.

But they can learn karate if they have squirrel friends.

There was a reason I said relatively. Though squid and octopi have change in significant ways they haven't changed as much as say pretty much any land animal. Mollusks and Jelly fish have changed even less. I think most of the changes are like size variations, the development of chromatophores, bigger brains, bigger eyes, etc. The main point is that if you see one of these things from billions of years ago you'd still be able to identify it for what it was.

Why learn a martial art when you're practically immortal? Karate chop a sponge in half? Two sponges attack you. Drop kick? Four sponges. Oh and the whole time they're just covering you in sperm and eggs. I'm reasonably sure sponges were the main inspiration for The Power Rangers movie.

Squids and octopods are mollusks! And there's a good deal more to it than that, though I suppose I am talking more physiologically than morphologically. Even there though there's been a lot of change. I find the term statis a bit deceiving even though it kind of makes sense when you consider the timescale. If you've seen spectulations on the mollusca ancestral body plan though, I don't think you'd be able to know its a squid and clam relative.

Psh, I can totally whup a sponge. No contest.

Not that I think it will, but just to give proper warning.
 

http://i46.tinypic.com/28vaelh.pngBy which I mean you were probably better off not saying anything at all. ;)

I really want to press the red button but I don't trust Blue.

It was a toss up between the picture and finding a clip of Fat Bastard singing about his baby back ribs. I actually found the baby really adorable sitting in the bucket

Krogo, what could a straight arrow like me possibly put in a swap tag? :J


Edit:

Now, if it were, say, a link, like this one...

http://i46.tinypic.com/28vaelh.png