Saturday Science: "It Takes a Village. . ."

to raise a child."

It seems that there is an evolutionary advantage in altruistic behavior, which seems like a no-brainer, but scientists have to be able to point to specifics. And now it looks as though a group of researchers has found something significant:

Until now, many researchers assumed that spontaneous altruistic behavior in primates could be attributed to factors they would share with humans: advanced cognitive skills, large brains, high social tolerance, collective foraging or the presence of pair bonds or other strong social bonds. As Burkart’s new data now reveal, however, none of these factors reliably predicts whether a primate species will be spontaneously altruistic or not. Instead, another factor that sets us humans apart from the great apes appears to be responsible. Says Burkart: “Spontaneous, altruistic behavior is exclusively found among species where the young are not only cared for by the mother, but also other group members such as siblings, fathers, grandmothers, aunts and uncles.” This behavior is referred to technically as the “cooperative breeding” or “allomaternal care.”

I've held the opinion for a while that the "nuclear family" ideal held out by the anti-gay right -- a father, a mother, 2.4 children, and a dog -- is quite recent and goes against the pattern of the real "traditional" family: parents, children, grandparents, maybe a stray aunt or uncle, and the neighbors. Looks like I was right.

And it looks like that pattern has other benefits:

The significance of this study goes beyond identifying the roots of our altruism. Cooperative behavior also favored the evolution of our exceptional cognitive abilities. During development, human children gradually construct their cognitive skills based on extensive selfless social inputs from caring parents and other helpers, and the researchers believe that it is this new mode of caring that also put our ancestors on the road to our cognitive excellence. This study may, therefore, have just identified the foundation for the process that made us human. As Burkart suggests: “When our hominin ancestors began to raise their offspring cooperatively, they laid the foundation for both our altruism and our exceptional cognition.”

That's part of the new drive to "talk to your baby" that I've been seeing around. From the New York Times:

Another idea, however, is creeping into the policy debate: that the key to early learning is talking — specifically, a child’s exposure to language spoken by parents and caretakers from birth to age 3, the more the better. It turns out, evidence is showing, that the much-ridiculed stream of parent-to-child baby talk — Feel Teddy’s nose! It’s so soft! Cars make noise — look, there’s a yellow one! Baby feels hungry? Now Mommy is opening the refrigerator! — is very, very important.

Another no-brainer: the more you interact with your kid, the better the kid's cognitive development. (And let's face it: language skills are a key component of cognitive development -- that's how we interact with the world.)

So now we're starting to understand how it happened.