My Daughter is a Monkey and so Can You!

I have noticed a lot of evolution talk lately. I don't know if it's a hot topic because of the phylogeny changes written about in Science and discussed on Coyne's site, or because of the stupid comments made by Bill O'Reilly regarding Richard Dawkins in their ongoing feud - or should I say O'Reilly's crusade. Maybe there is something special going on to which I am not privy. Is November "Evolution Month"? Perhaps there's absolutely nothing special going on and it's somewhat random. Whatever the reason, I can't think of a more serendipitous time to post this piece.

If you've read some of my previous posts, you'll know that I have a bit of a - relationship to the subject of evolution because of my childhood. I believed it was an agenda-based belief system that was outside of science and an affront to religious understanding. My view has since changed. I hold a fascination and a lot of respect for the subject. I haven't converted or been persuaded by a believer. I once denied evolution out of hand, but now I know better and so can you. Simply open your eyes and look around.
Let me start by saying my daughter is a monkey.
This, of course, is not true. However, if you were to see my daughter you might have to think about it. Imagine the infant here with much lighter coloring and less hair and you might actually have my daughter in mind. I love it!
I was watching my wife feed our daughter recently and it really struck me how animal it appeared. I didn't think, "How sweet!" or "Isn't it beautiful and wonderful?" I didn't ooh and ahh at the calm bonding of the woman and child before me. Perhaps I've grown desensitized by having seen each of our four children breast-feed for a year apiece. Perhaps my daughter's noisy gulping or the use of her feet during eating is simply too distracting. I don't mean to present myself as a detached or cynical observer. I do see the beauty. I love my children and marvel at my wife's nurturing capabilities. (My wife just said it's 'cause she's like a comic -that's a reference to my use of 'marvel,' by the way. You must understand that my wife's sense of humor is underdeveloped and hasn't yet evolved.)
Just by chance, I had been reading The Nature of Human Nature by Dr. Carin Bondar. The synopsis on the back begins with, "Members of the human species behave as though we are vastly separate from other animals." That's such a great statement, isn't it? I had wanted to read this book since I first learned of it because of its premise. It's a fun foray into the subject, covering lots of examples and the easy style with which it is written makes it accessible to a wide variety of experience levels. One of my favorite facets of Dr. Bondar's book, and her persona across the web, is simply the enthusiasm she brings. We should see our natural world enthusiastically and be constantly considering how we figure into it alongside our biological brethren.
My own imagination has put into mind several things. The first and foremost of which is how incredible it is that our children, derived from ourselves through our genes and then influences, emerge as fully individual entities. As they socialize (i.e. learn new tricks) I see them for the animals they are which is not hard to do with four kids. However, despite all the similarities to our hairier cousins, the striking point is really how far we've come as a species.
The purpose of all this rambling really comes down to, as a father, I see our connection to the rest of the animal kingdom and therefore, suggestions of evolution all the time. In fact, I can no longer image the world of people without evolution. Watching my children develop is akin to a curtain blowing open just a bit to where I have discerned the stage and players in between sets of a production.
And it's brought up all kinds of entertaining questions.
*Warning - Spoiler Alert* The following statements are purely the musings of an evolutionary novice and father of four equally yet independently crazy children. My wife and I share our bed with the youngest: i.e. haven't had a complete night's sleep at home in at least two years since we had also previously shared it with her brother. So one should not take anything that follows as gospel.
Question #1: How could we ever have evolved to a point where we must take care of our children for so long? Where is the fitness in that?
Those of us who are normal collectively have only enough children to keep the population at a plus, the others have television shows and book deals. This means that we really don't produce a lot of kids and early on the growth in population would have been slow. Obviously, we now have the ability to keep our children alive in ways we didn't possess when we walked out of Africa. As we tarried north during the last ice age, was it our budding mental capacities that kept us alive? I can't believe that the energy lost during the raising of Sally-gluck-gluck for so many years helped out much.
I'd like to think that we could somehow conceptualize or anticipate the difficulties of the move and the need for us to cozy up to our newly acquired constant companions the dog or our dumb but warm cousins the Neanderthals helped us survive. At some point our thoughtfulness led to survival and completely belied the extremely long bout of virtual helplessness that our children continue to exhibit.
(I must interject here that my two year old just came to me to show how naked and therefore unprotected he currently is. This is clearly not a survival instinct.)
Now, yes, I know that evolution is not intentional or "upwardly" directional and hasn't been leading to us. There is no chimpanzee that thinks, "I like these cigarettes so much that I want to be human so I can buy them myself."

Smoking Chimp

There's no Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics driving others to gain our big brains and bad backs. So it must have been the mutational development of those big brains that allowed us to out-survive our hardier kin.
I realize that what we are currently is nothing like what we were then. I don't mean our technology and society, rather our ability, physically and mentally, to generate those things. We couldn't have just gone from an animal that walked on all fours with our young tucked away in a nest of sorts to one walking upright with screaming babies on our backs. There had to have been earlier versions of we were to become. Case in point: my daughter, who is totally mellow most of the time(the rest of the time she's awake), screeches at such decibels that it makes our older children's previous volumes seem muted. I'm not sure, but I'm fairly certain that, given half a chance, predators of yore would not have allowed that attribute to persist.
Question #2: Even with our evident loss of animal instincts, how can anyone deny our stupid animal-like behaviors?
It's hard enough being a parent. There is a constant re-evaluation of what matters and what makes sense. In addition, on any given day, my children invoke their inner monkeys, dogs, squirrels, birds and fungi. If we had arrived fully form, made from scratch as it were, without any intermediate forms, then why must we socialize our children? Why should we need to tell them to lower their voices, stop running with dangerous objects in their hands, stop hitting their siblings and stop playing with their genitals at the lunch table? Our actions and attitudes as children so closely mirror behaviors seen in the animal kingdom that it's hard to discount the connection.
Even as adolescents and adults we exhibit behaviors that are not supported by our societal norms but rather suggest our lineage, such as certain posturing and mating behaviors. They don't compare in complexity or beauty to the rituals of various bird species we've become familiar. (There is currently a buck outside our window that is missing one antler and has a bloody back flank. We don't have to go through that, thank goodness.) Perhaps our species would be better off if we did participate in a more elaborate mate-selection process. Would we all look like Greek heroes with brains like Einstein? I don't mean that we should practice eugenics or anything, even dogs don't do that. Besides a distinguishing aspect of humans as a species is our society and our sense of responsibility to and for our fellow members and those of other species.
Question #3: Sure, we are still very limited in our experience of the rest of the universe and it doesn't help that we know of no similar life out in the cosmos, but what is so unbelievable about evolution? Why is it so hard to accept that we are part of the same system that regulates the rest of life?
I remember thinking as a child that if evolution were true then we would see monkeys becoming humans all the time. I now realize how flawed my logic had been and am disappointed when I come across similar statements from others. It's okay to not understand evolution, but I feel that any adult saying something to that effect is ridiculous. I previously posted some thoughts on this topic. I also mentioned a guy who said to me he believed in evolution, just not human evolution. When I hear anyone make a declaration like that, it makes me want to jab 'em in the coccyx. Look, we're all in this boat together. We eat, breathe, sleep, reproduce and die in such fundamentally similar ways that evolution is undeniable in my book. The thing that distinguishes us most is our complex culture. Just as whales have a culture and ants have a culture and bees and birds and monkeys each have cultures, we have our own distinct and varied culture. Of course, for humans geography is our greatest determining factor, whereas other animals are governed by their species.
My last point is I think it's a shame that many people with a faith-based belief system feel a need to discredit the obvious. If you're a believer, then "...with God, all things are possible." And how awesome is His creation? If you're not a believer then how awesome is this mechanism of nature? It's a net win either way. I overcame my prejudice and learned something in the process and so can you.
In summary: my daughter is not really a monkey, but she looks like one. My kids are all crazy animals but have no survival instincts and many of their actions probably reduce fitness, but I love them anyway. Neanderthals were probably dumb yet warm friends- with-benefits. And even religious people can believe in evolution without giving up their faith.
Expect more from me about this in the future, but for now I need to go and save my son from himself.