Why we teach kids animal sounds
I read the following in Sapiens the other day:
The human brain has been adapted to store and process only particular types of information. In order to survive, ancient hunter-gatherers had to remember the shapes, qualities and behavior patterns of thousands of plant and animal species.
Yuval Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
When I read this, I immediately thought of my one-year-old daughter. One of her favorite activities lately is reading animal books and making animal sounds. Regularly throughout the day she makes the sign for book, and she always chooses animal books when we give her an option. She makes distinct sounds for tiger, elephant, monkey, fish, owl, cat, dog, and rabbit. And she doesn’t get bored of reading the books. After we finish a book, she turns back to a random page and wants to keep making sounds.
I’ve wondered this before: Why is it that we focus so heavily on teaching animal sounds to our babies?
I’m sure there are multiple reasons.
One reason could be language development. Learning animal sounds is a straightforward and fun way for babies to practice speech mechanics.
But I’m now wondering if another reason is that our brains are adapted to learn animals. It’s almost an instinct for parents to start teaching animals and animal sounds. It’s like we don’t even realize we’re doing it; subconsciously we just know our kids need to learn their animals. And on the flip side, kids are captivated by animals and seem to love learning their sounds. It feels like both parents and children are adapted to identifying animals.
And it’s not exactly obvious why. Is it really that important for a modern-day child to be able to identify a monkey? She’ll likely only see a few real monkeys in her life, maybe in a zoo or if she travels abroad. But that’s it. There’s no obvious utility for her to know about monkeys. Yet it’s one of the first things we teach our kids.
Now travel back a million years, and suddenly the utility is obvious.
Our forager ancestors dealt with wild animals daily. Knowing animals and animal sounds was key to their survival.
So here’s my takeaway:
Maybe our innate drive to teach our kids animals, and our kids’ adeptness at learning animals, is evidence of our ancient forager ancestry.