LATEST ANTHRO SNIPPET:

Wellll, a different mammal but so important to pull us our of our human-centric feelings of superiority…..A pod of sperm whales were spotted in Caribbean waters, tightly grouped together. Sceientists observing them were wondering what was going on, until there was a spurt of blood in the water and a newborn sperm whale appeared as the adult whales helped it reach the surface for its first breath. Like a group of women at a human birth, these whales, these whales were from two different genetic linages were there to help the mother and newborn. Cooperation by the largest animals on Earth and an example to us puny humans.

People reproduce and bring up children in all sorts of configurations (I know, because I just wrote a book about family around the world and though out human history…. and here’s a new option: Find someone who also wants a child, make a baby and cooperate in parenting without any strings beyond being parnts: Making a Child Minus the Couple

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Lucy Had Company: Since 2009, Ethiopian paleontologists have been recovering foot bones and a jaw containing baby and adult teeth of what is now a newly named species—Australopithecus deyiremeda—that was alive about 3.4 million years ago. These discoveries suggest that Lucy and her kind (A. afarensis) lived contemporaneously with another species that was also bipedal but retained clear signs of regular tree climbing.