Hey babies, Trace here for DNews! Thanks for watching!

Part of being a new parent is dealing with a wailing infant, sacrificing sleep and sanity

to keep the new creature calm, warm, quiet, and fed. A new study in the journal Evolution,

Medicine and Public Health is bringing the reality of your little bundle of selfishness

to light! Babies don't want siblings!

Think about it, if your baby is screaming and crying, that's not exactly the sexiest

environment for making ANOTHER baby. If you're taking care of your baby you're not in the

bedroom gettin' freaky. It's genius! BABIES ARE TINY GENIUSES! Which explains their big

heads, I guess... Newborns want to EAT every 2-3 hours. Evolutionarily, newborn eating

means breast-feeding. There have been numerous studies showing the hormones, antibodies and

nutrients passing from the mother to the child during breast-feeding. Breast-feeding has

also been connected to hormonal changes responsible for a lack of motherly ovulation. No eggs,

no new babies!

Turns out, over the first year of life, the newborn's crying habits can change, depending

on the genes it inherited from the parents. Certain genes from dad would cause the baby

to cry MORE and keep the mother awake longer, because when living in the wild, it's not

in the father's best interest to have the mother ovulate again, because she could be

impregnated by a competing male!

We've talked about the effect of birth order on DNews, so you might recall, the firstborn

gets 100 percent of the parent's resources! That monopoly has huge developmental advances,

so it's not just in the best interest of a dad to keep the mom from breeding again, but

the kid too! As humans moved away from our ancient, natural, existence into this modern

one we stopped breeding as much as possible and hoping some survive, and instead ensure

the survival of every kid we birth! Who does that? That is a very different evolutionary

imperative.

This conversation inevitably finds its way to a simple evolutionary question: Why would

we evolve super loud babies if we're hiding from predators in the wild?! Chimpanzee babies

wail too, bird babies are noisy, even insect babies have learned attention-getting behavior.

It might attract predators, but rather more importantly, it gets the parents attention

to feed, protect, warm, or comfort it. Some scientists feel wailing sends evolutionary

signals to parents the baby is fighting for survival -- and is vigorous. I couldn't find

any science explaining some predatory disadvantage to wailing, but considering the number of

species that DO IT, it's probably no thang. We'll have to see.

In the end, hunger and sexual discouragement is just one of many reasons babies will wail

through the night, they'll also cry to announce their pain, anger, or fear. A study in the

Spanish Journal of Psychology looked at infant's subtle body language to find which. For example,

open-eye crying means fear or anger, closed-eye crying is pain. Babies are pretty smart little

buggers, messing with their parents sexual cycles, sleep cycles and food cycles. Many

parents debate the best way to respond to crying, and I'm not here to settle THAT, but

over time primates respond less and less to their babe's wailing, and the kid learns to

do things on their own. You humans will just have to decide for yourself.

Babies are weird, and they're gross and they're something else... Beautiful maybe? If you

like things that are weird, gross and beautiful click here to see my friend Catie Wayne's

show about weird, gross and beautiful things! It's fun and cute and fun every week. How

do you feel about babies after this? Tell us in the comments below, and subscribe for

more weird news. Plus, I'm on Twitter! Come find me at-TraceDominguez!