Why humans take about a year to begin walking while other animals, horses, cows, begin to walk within hours?

Question

Why humans take about a year to begin walking while other animals, horses, cows, begin to walk within hours?

Answer 1

Four legs verses two and instincts kick in... If you had to stand up to eat for the first time, you would do your best to start walking right away too!!

Answer 2

For two separate reasons. We homo sapiens have a double-S curve in our backbone that provides a springy balance to our bipedalism. No other animal has this. A baby is born without this S curve, and it takes time to develop. Secondly, the nerves to the leg muscles, at time of birth, are not sheathed yet. Ever notice how a baby seems to be kicking randomly? Anyway, it takes about one year for the nerves to grow their insulative sheaths. Now the baby, with developing S curve and working nerves, can easily walk.

Answer 3

To add on to some of the other good answers (except the biped vs quadruped thing)...humans have the largest brain to body ratio of all animals.  We're born with our brains (and everything else really) not fully developed.  If we gave birth when we were at the same developmental period of other animals, the babies heads would be way too big to fit through the birth canal, so we're born "early" and are very dependent on our mothers for a long period of time.  Look up altricial and precocial.

Answer 4

Because unlike other animals humans do not have the same fly or fight instinct because unlike a animal (i.e cattle) have predators after it. so in short it is because we are at the top of the food chain and are sheltered from predators. (not because we are bipeds another animals are quadrupeds.)

Answer 5

Because they have too. If an animal in the wild did not learn to walk really quickly it would get eaten. It doesn't matter how long it takes for a person to learn to walk because they will not die if they don't learn how to walk quickly.

Answer 6

Because we walk on two legs and it's hard to balance that way. Babies learn to crawl pretty fast.