Researchers wanted to get to the bottom of an age-old question in evolutionary biology: the origin of begging. Natural selection favors a greedy, well-fed child. But it also favors parents who dole out food evenly to their young, and save some for themselves.
So how do you resolve that parent-child conflict? Burying beetles do so by putting the ultimate price on pleading: death. Begging larvae were 13 times more likely than laid-back larvae to be eaten by mom. Which may discourage them from asking for more than their fair share of the grub. That finding appears in the journal Behavioral Ecology. [Clare P. Andrews and Per T. Smiseth, Differentiating among alternative models for the resolution of parent–offspring conflict]
Humans have different standards than beetles do, of course. For us, pestering your parents may be a good thing. One study [Virpi Lummaa et al, Why Cry? Adaptive Significance of Intensive Crying in Human Infants, in Evolution and Human Behavior, 1998] suggests crying is a sign of good health, which might lower a baby's chances of being neglected or abused. Then again, after those first few years, you're probably better off not being a crybaby.
—Christopher Intagliata
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast]
