Learning in the womb

There’s a lot of evidence that we humans start learning before we are born, even laying down memories two months or so before birth. Babies are born knowing what their mothers sound like and recognizing their mother’s scent. And if their dad spent a lot of time talking at them, they can recognize his voice too. They remember songs or stories they heard repeatedly in the womb. It’s amazing what we do before we even start breathing.

Turns out humans aren’t the only ones with this ability. Superb fairy wrens in Australia learn their mother’s voice and an apparent code word before they are even born that their mothers use to identify which chicks in the nest are theirs and need food and which chicks are intruders of a different species and are trying to steal their babies’ resources. The fact that they don’t need months in the womb/egg to start learning is irrelevant because their few weeks in the egg aren’t exactly the as the months in the womb.

It would be interesting to find out how many more babies learn before birth and just how many things we are learning clear from the get-go.