Why are human babies kid-napped?

From: Philip A.E. Jonkers (phae@uclink.berkeley.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 20 2001 - 00:59:43 GMT

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Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 16:59:43 -0800
From: "Philip A.E. Jonkers" <phae@uclink.berkeley.edu>
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Subject: Why are human babies kid-napped?
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    Hi John, I keep wondering why human infants seem to be rather favorable by wolves to

    bring up as one of their own species. Might it be that humans, due to being so outstandingly

    plastic adaptive Baldwin machines, that we fit the bill of any animal of roughly equal

    size and posture. I mean, when non-human new-borns would be kid-napped instead wouldn't

    instinct take over at a certain stage during the upbringing forcing the captives to

    part and leave the nest? Non-human newborns are therefore unsuitable to be kid-napped

    and brought up in nests of other species.

    Humans have the remarkable ability, perhaps this is their instinct, to imitate everything

    that crosses their paths. By such survival flexibility we seem to be suitable just

    as easily to act as wolves, or monkeys or what have you...

    Cheers again,

    *********************************
    Philip A.E. Jonkers
    PhD Computational Physics
    Post-doc Neuroscience (Vision)
    University of California at Berkeley
    1757 Oxford Street #8
    Berkeley CA 94709 USA
    Lab-phone: 1-510-643-7859
    *********************************

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