do primate babies cry as humans do?
98736
Chimpanzee babies fuss. Sea gull chicks squawk. Burying beetle larvae tap their parents' legs. Throughout the animal kingdom, babies know how to get their parents' attention. Exactly why evolution has produced all this fussing, squawking and tapping is a question many biologists are trying to answer.
255323
Interesting question. Worth exploring a bit.\n\nI am wondering if it is in part caused by our tendency to imitate and mimic one another (what the Greeks called mimesis (which is the basis of acting) ?\n\nMonkeys and apes have this ability too. so I wondered if there have been studies of monkeys and apes which have looked at "chain reacion" emotions soreading like wildfire within a group, and whether heirarchies and pecking orders affect this? Will a low status individual copy a high status one, but not the other way around?\n\nAnd does the same pecking order apply in humans? Certainly, a chair of a meeting has to sense if a topic is exhausted and move the meeting on to the next item on the agenda, and measuring whether people are bored or interested is part of that judgement.\n\nPerhaps it is a combination of mimesis and empathy involved i.e. we are more liable to feel the way others in the room are feeling if we are empathetically "engaged"  with them, putting ourselves in their shoes so as to understand what they are feeling.
547686
Yes they do. They make bleats and babies whimper. You can listen here: http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-giant_panda.html
884086
It's an innate quality they have.\n\nWhen human babies are breastfeeding they automatically know how to do it. (Whether or not they warm up to Mom is a different story). Or when human babies cry because they are hungry, or tired, or bored...same thing.\n\nOr in human adults...when something scares us automatically our hearts race, our pupils dilate, our digestion slows...all to get us ready to run.\n\nIt's just a natural, in-born trait. Kinda like a reflex.
70360
Monkeys with monkeys yes! Humans with monkeys NO!
1181995
Humans and monkeys evolved from the same common ancestor.\nNow humans and monkeys are seperate species. \nComparisons between chimp and human DNA show the two species share 95 per cent of their genetic material.\nMonkeys aren't going to change into humans - this has nothing to do with Darwin's theory on human origins.
641005
The one study I remember is an infant Reces(sp?) monkey that they have fed by a baby bottle and no mother or human attatchment.As opposed to one that is nursed by mother.\nIt shows poor psychological development and poor social developmnet
675603
well... if u want to know the scientific reason , they have got a sound box called `syrinx' where we have the "larynx".\nand no..they are not talking. they do not have a broca`s area for that ., it only developed in humans..    communicating yes.as for the ranges of their sound, each one is meant for diff. purposes.(feeding, mating).this is my surmise. anyway, its a lovely ques..
1106991
babies are cute for survival purposes.\n\nOnly babies that somehow cause us to want to take care of them will live.  We are hard-wired to respond to them.  \n\nAnd crying?  It's no accident that people will do almost anything to get a crying baby to stop...  It's the most disturbing sound in the world- and there's a billion years of natural selection behind that particular noise, and our response to it!  \n\nBut that's how they get care when they need it.  And being cute helps us decide to help them instead of harming them to stop the noise.
316167
well, only primates have hands. But I doubt this is the case. How do you know it is a fact that humans and not gorillas, orangatans and chimpanzeess shade their eyes?Mark Twain once said " Man is the only animal that blushes, and needs to."
360893
Chimpanzees have a behaviour similar to a laugh, a low repeated barking call, it is essentially a submissive call used after a dominant member of the troop does something the lower ranked chimp approves of, or wants the dominant member to think he approves of.  There may be some of this behaviour in our own laughing, and may be why some folks seek out making other people laugh, or why we feel obligated to laugh at the boss's jokes.\n\nThere is also calls like the hyena's or pie-billed grebe that sound superficially like human laughter, but really aren't.
1044320
On the Origin of Crying and Tears\n\n \n\nHuman Ethology Newsletter, Vol. 5 Issue 10, june 1989, p. 5-6\n\n \nSummary\n\nCrying and tears may be favored by natural selection because they bring about helping behaviour by the spectator. This helping behaviour is explained by the assumption that crying and tears “imitate” some of the perceivable characteristics of a baby that has just been born (e.g., wet face, facial expressions, respiratory sounds). If human parents and people in general are “programmed” by evolution to feel the need to help and protect when they see (and hear) newborns, then when nonneonates are in need, the appearance and the behavior that together show resemblance to the neonate may have survival value at some essential points during phylogeny and, thus, may spread in the human species.\n\nIn ontogeny, the fact that the shedding of tears usually occurs for the first time not until weeks or months after birth is not an argument against this view but, rather, supports it.\n\n \n\nSome Theories Regarding the Function of Emotional Tears.\n\nIn The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin listed three reasons for the secretion of tears: “The primary function of the secretion of tears, with some mucus, is to lubricate the surface of the eye, and a secondary one, as some believe, is to keep the nostrils damp, so that the inhaled air may be moist, and likewise to favour the power of smelling. But another, and at least equally important function of tears is to wash out particles of dust or other minute objects which may get into the eyes” (Darwin, 1872: 169). In Darwin’s view, the excretion of emotional tears was related to the first function.\n\nIn more recent years, A. Montagu (1959) offered another explanation of emotional tears: The intake and expulsion of air that occurs in sobbing would cause the sensitive mucous membranes of the nasopharynx to dry out quickly if tears did not keep them moist, and as a result, the risk of infection would increase. This explanation was criticized by W.H. Frey (1982:9) who wrote: “Humans do not excrete tears while running or performing other exercise where breathing is increased.” He hypothesized that, like urinating, defecating, and exhaling, emotional tearing may be involved in the removing of waste products or toxic substances from the body. Perhaps people feel better after crying because as they shed tears, they also shed, in those tears, chemicals that build up during emotional stress.\n\nThese explanations are essentially physiological, and Darwin made explicit that he assumed no other, more fundamental reason for weeping. He wrote: “…we must look at weeping as an incidental result, as purposeless as the secretion of tears from a blow outside the eye, or as a sneeze from the retina being affected by a bright light, …” (Darwin, 1872: 176-177). In his view, the sole effect of weeping or crying is to give relief to individuals who are experiencing the agony of pain.\n\nIn contrast to Darwin’s point of view, the explanation that follows directly links crying and the secretion of tears to evolutionary theory. Crying and the emotional secretion of tears are considered here to be messages that contain a request for help, and humans have the ability to cry and to shed tears because these messages have proven to be effective.\n\n \n\nAn Evolutionary Explanation of Crying and Tears.\n\nThis explanation is based on three assumptions.\n\nA.       In many species of animals, the stimuli emitted by newborns bring about parental care. In fact, the newborns of many species require parental care. Because a newborn has little else to offer than its own appearance and behaviour, it is logical that it is exactly these factors that elicit the parental care. Parents who do not react in the appropriate way to the appearance and behaviour of newborns reduce the fitness of their offspring and, therefore, the likelihood of the occurrence of behaviour rese
1085151
Everything God created has a way of communicating. They may not cry, but they sure have a way of communication with themselves and things created in their likeness.\n\nHave you not seen a dog cry before, a parrot, cat, etc they all cry.\n\nI don't know whether God cries, nothing was ever mentioned of that nature in the bible. If he does, then it would be interesting.
646195
Well monkeys do get their looks from apes, right?
484382
expressing wonder  \nthe cry of a weeping baby
910504
The humans are interesting to watch, especially if its feeding time or mating season.  I love to watch them stuff their faces full of food.  Odd creatures, yet fascinating.  If not them, see the primates first.  They seem to be the most active.
283764
It's all psychological and "anatomical (?):" When you hear something that's emotionally painful to you, your brain starts to think differently and asks and answers multiple questions at the same time, consciencely or subconsciencely. To some point of this simultaneous complex thinking, it will tell the tear ducts to expel tears for no reason. Also, it will have some kind of pain around your heart (the heart-break feeling).\n\nI don't know exactly why the brain does that, but I think it's merely psychological. All animals do not cry for emotional or physical pain (salt-water crocodiles "cry" to expel salt). My hypothesis would be that sometime millenias ago, crying was a sign of sadness in some way, then, as evolution takes place, it just becomes embedded in our mind that the instinct when we're in pain, we tend to cry. But that's just my hypothesis and to my extent of my knowledge.\n\nPS Penguins!!!