Posted inField Notes

Childbirth: Why So Difficult?

The “obstetrical dilemma” was born, so to speak, in 1960, not in a medical journal, but in the pages of Scientific American magazine. There, anthropologist Sherwood Washburn proposed that the ease with which most non-human primates give birth when compared to humans comes down to bipedalism. While a mother-to-be great ape will seek seclusion to […]

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