How Developed Would Baby Mwindo Be?

In real life, humans get pregnant for only nine months. Once born, the baby has a long way to go before it can stand, walk and talk.

But don't tell that to Mwindo!

The African saga of the hero Mwindo starts with the favored of Shemwindo's seven wives having a longer-than-normal pregnancy. It's never stated for how much longer, but it's been said that the unborn child could perform impressive magical feats before ever leaving his mother's womb! (Something I don't remember seeing in either Greece or Egypt.)

Now let's disregard the magic for the moment and observe this feat scientifically. A longer pregnancy has longer drawbacks (currently, a pretty damning reality for certain endangered species), but also results in a more developed baby. So how long should Mwindo's gestation be? Let's look no farther than the mammal with the longest gestation period--not the blue whale, but someone far smaller--the African bush elephant. The world's largest land animal has a gestation period of 22 months, and that results in a pretty big-brained baby, the biggest on land. Compared to our human babies, a newly born elephant can stand up for up to an hour after birth and keep up with the herd shortly afterwards. In fact, a baby elephant is born with its brain at 35% its adult size. (Our baby brains, by contrast, are only 28% the size of our adult brains.)

So if a human child develops inside its mother's womb for as long as an elephant child, how developed would the baby be at 12 hours old?

posted over 5 years ago

JohnWDailey‭

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