How do other mammals instinctively know how to swim, but humans don't?

I'm going to guess they are just naturally more buoyant than us?

Human babies innately hold their breath and "swim" from newborn to ~6 months.

bartholomew_maxwell wrote:

Why do bears, dogs, deers, felines all know how to swim without having formal swimming lessons but humans don't?

I've wondered this as well.

I would point out though, we do have instinctive responses to falling into water if we have never learned to swim. Many drowning incidents have been captured on film, so we know that drowning people almost universally have the same motions with their arms and legs. They press down with their arms in front, barely raising their head over water, tilt their head back to suck a tiny bit of air, then raise their hands back up, causing them to sink again. Usually there is no kicking, or ineffective kicking.

My only guess is that we evolved physically very quickly, so our instincts didnt keep up, IE, they became maladaptive. There were other mutations that were more rewarding that any random mutations that improved our instinctive swimming, so our swimming instinct remained something that was effective if we had the body of a the great ape lineage we descended from.

Unfortunately, with the shape of our limbs and neck, those same actions are pretty useless.

I wonder if somebody has studied this? Compared motion patterns, which muscles are being activated in what order, versus the analogous muscles in great apes and how they swim.

Human babies evolved to have small, undeveloped brains (and multi-piece skulls that can squeeze smaller) to fit through the narrow hips of the human female mother. Human babies take years and years to become viable away from the parents for this reason. Other mammals don't have this limitation and are born with pretty much a fully developed brain. They can walk almost immediately after birth, instinct is stronger in their develped brains.

Unless, of course, I'm wrong.

Might as well plop a PSA into this thread, maybe somebody reading this will watch this video and save a life as a result:

https://mariovittone.com/2011/07/video-of-instinctive-drowning-response/

Who says animals don't have formal swimming lessons?

bartholomew_maxwell wrote:

Why do bears, dogs, deers, felines all know how to swim without having formal swimming lessons but humans don't?

What about other primates? I have heard gorillas can't swim. Also, it seems like swimming is simpler for animals with 4 legs because they don't need to reposition themselves to be flat in the water. All they need to do is move their legs.

because....Baby, we Were Born to Run!

seattle prattle wrote:

because....Baby, we Were Born to Run!

this guy knows what he's talking about! :)

common knowledge wrote:

Human babies innately hold their breath and "swim" from newborn to ~6 months.

I have heard this too, although right now I can't cite a source and I'm too lazy to Google it. I've heard that children learn to swim just fine if they are introduced to water early enough.

Clearly it varies a lot from one person to another, though. My family moved from the northeast to southern California when I was 3 years old and my sister was 1. My parents, terrified that we would drown in someone's pool, immediately carted us off to the Y for swimming lessons. I loved the water at first sight and swam just fine from day 1. My sister was terrified at first and took a very long time to learn to swim.

Monkeys and apes can't swim.

End of thread.

Maybe in a Darwinistic world people without the inherent ability to swim would die and not reproduce. The hairs on our body naturally grow in a swirl pattern, as if moving through water. We are "supposed" to swim.

amkelley wrote:

common knowledge wrote:

Human babies innately hold their breath and "swim" from newborn to ~6 months.

I have heard this too, although right now I can't cite a source and I'm too lazy to Google it. I've heard that children learn to swim just fine if they are introduced to water early enough.

Clearly it varies a lot from one person to another, though. My family moved from the northeast to southern California when I was 3 years old and my sister was 1. My parents, terrified that we would drown in someone's pool, immediately carted us off to the Y for swimming lessons. I loved the water at first sight and swam just fine from day 1. My sister was terrified at first and took a very long time to learn to swim.

I, on the other hand, was terrified at southern California at the first sight, though swimming was no problem.

The ability to swim has not been a driver of human evolution for many reasons, among which are

) humans evolved as land creatures that walked down their prey. crossing water wasn't very important.

) humans ate land food. The early hominids couldn't catch most sea food.

) by the time they invented tools that could catch sea food, they were also able to make boats, which are even better for crossing water than swimming is. Even in the age of exploration many sailors couldn't swim.

Bad Wigins wrote:

) by the time they invented tools that could catch sea food, they were also able to make boats, which are even better for crossing water than swimming is. Even in the age of exploration many sailors couldn't swim.

What type of safety measures were in place for sailors who fell overboard or a ship capsized?

bartholomew_maxwell wrote:

Bad Wigins wrote:

) by the time they invented tools that could catch sea food, they were also able to make boats, which are even better for crossing water than swimming is. Even in the age of exploration many sailors couldn't swim.

What type of safety measures were in place for sailors who fell overboard or a ship capsized?

Redundancy. If a boat capsized and all the people on board fell in, another boat full of people could be launched to take its place. Its always better to be in the boat that didnt capsize.

kudosmyass wrote:

Human babies evolved to have small, undeveloped brains (and multi-piece skulls that can squeeze smaller) to fit through the narrow hips of the human female mother. Human babies take years and years to become viable away from the parents for this reason. Other mammals don't have this limitation and are born with pretty much a fully developed brain. They can walk almost immediately after birth, instinct is stronger in their develped brains.

Unless, of course, I'm wrong.

This is almost right. But also the opposite of right?

Because humans have oversized heads to hold our giant brains, we’re both at what would be considered premature for other mammals. Human babies have the reflex/instinct to walk and swim (kind of), but do not have the developed musculature to perform those actions. By the time we have developed those muscles, the reflexive movements have been pretty forgotten or overwritten.

Bad Wigins wrote:

Even in the age of exploration many sailors couldn't swim.

Learning to swim is mostly something for the privileged, even today. I've known a number of people that grew up in islands in the Caribbean or Pacific and none of them can really swim, even though they lived in a place surrounded by water and spent time at the beach. Pretty much only middle and and upper class people in the US and Australia teach kids to swim at a young age. And even in those place it depends on where you live. Kids in CA swim in PE starting in kindergarten, but that is not true in the NE or Midwest.

brisk wrote:

Bad Wigins wrote:

Even in the age of exploration many sailors couldn't swim.

Learning to swim is mostly something for the privileged, even today. I've known a number of people that grew up in islands in the Caribbean or Pacific and none of them can really swim, even though they lived in a place surrounded by water and spent time at the beach. Pretty much only middle and and upper class people in the US and Australia teach kids to swim at a young age. And even in those place it depends on where you live. Kids in CA swim in PE starting in kindergarten, but that is not true in the NE or Midwest.

I grew up in a rural area with a lot of people living below the poverty line. Every kid I knew could swim, so don’t think your argument holds water. I don’t ever remember learning to swim and am not aware of my friends ever taking swimming lessons. No one ever “taught” us to swim and the ability was not determined by socioeconomic factors. It was just a thing people did at the pond/lake/river/creek/pool. My hypothesis is that humans are natural swimmers but people who have not learned to do it at a younger age have a psychological affect that overrides their natural instinct and causes them to panic when in the after.