I just remembered that apes smile when hostile. This isn’t a happy scene. This monkey has full meter and a full screen projectile in it’s move list. This is an invitation to death.
Humans have this distress response too! If you watch the smaller of their young you will spot the occasional baring of teeth in upsetting situations. You can see this with adult humans as well, but it’s harder to catch because they have a fairly deep somatic vocabulary assigned to smiles; it is probably easiest to recognise after minor injury like stubbing a toe or receiving an injection.
It’s a lot of fun comparing how related species have related behaviours, and also neat to contrast how they have specialised them!
this is interesting but
If you watch the smaller of their young
why did you word it like that
Thanks for the question! My area of expertise is more generally avian than it is mammalian (or primate), so I don’t really know the technical nomenclature for the specific stage of human offspring development I mean to communicate.
With the vocabulary I have the closest I can get semantically is ‘mid-nestling to fledgling fresh-fallen from the nest’ but the concepts don’t quite map to how human offspring develop. Another way to phrase it is able to move around under their own power but still heavily dependent on parental intervention for survival.
Hope this helps clear things up! Have a nice day :)
You studied birds so long you forgot that the word toddler exists and I think that’s just delightful.
