Caballero Prieto |1

Class: Anthropology 1020-090

Student: Juan A. Caballero Prieto

The Mother-Offspring Conflict and its Involvement in Human Evolution

It is common to see the familiar unit as a safe haven for children and parents. A unit of

creationism that was formed no less than 6000 BP (before the present). Creationists will explain

how God created all things in a seven-day period and how the first family saw its beginnings

with Adam and Eve; and how they lived in harmony until they were banished from the Garden of

Eden, at which point they proceeded to bare children.

In Anthropology, it is our duty to look past the beliefs produced by humanity and to study

the evidence; this evidence suggests that humanity is far older than the 6000 years creationists

will give us. Dating back to the species Purgatorious 65 mya (million years ago), human

evolution has been a systematic process in which Homo Sapiens was “selected” through the

processes of natural selection and evolution. Therefore, it was also thus with the families we

have today, right down to the so-called mother-offspring conflict.

Many questions arise in regards to the reasons behind the natural selection of pregnancy

in humans: Why would have natural selection favored such a long gestational period? What are

the reasons behind our highly developed brain? How does the fetus keep itself alive inside the

mother’s body when the latter identifies it as an invader? I will list a few reasons why pregnancy

may have aided the creation of families and will move on the questions posed above.
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A family’s evolution

While our earliest mammal ancestors may have coexisted with the great reptilian

dinosaurs, striking differences separated the two species. Egg-laying reptilian mothers (much

like birds today) were free to move around and seek food for their young in preparation for the

birth of their offspring. While certain temperatures had to be maintained in order to promote

proper embryo development, the cost of keeping such a creature alive for female reptiles was

much lesser than the cost outputted by the very pregnant mammalian counterparts. Certain

advantages were obtained when a species was chosen to carry the egg inside the female’s womb,

but there were also many offsets to this situation, corrected (or not) over time by Natural

Selection. Much like a peacock’s tail, pregnancy offered a way for a female to state her high

degree of fitness; being pregnant and still able to function and move around (ie. gather) proved to

the male that such a female was a viable partner for mating.

While our earlier ancestors may have behaved much like social characters, examples we

see in species like the Gorilla or Baboons of today, there was a point where the female actively

sought a monogamous male mate. With the “jump” from the trees to the ground, and the advent

of bipedal locomotion, females were defenseless from predators, and a more stable system

sought in order to keep up our reproductive fitness. The family then evolved out of necessity in a

flat, bipedal world. The ever increasing brain size of the offspring along with the necessity for it

to be born earlier, as to fit through the birth canal, increased the mother’s necessity to relinquish

the hunt, and gives room for the Grandmother Hypothesis mentioned above, so that mothers

would be freer to gather proteins necessary for family life. These transitions however, were not

peaceful ones; from conception to birth, the fetus is at constant battle with the mother for

resources. Let us discuss then, how pregnancy begins and the battle takes place.
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Mother-offspring conflict

I have discussed how pregnancy and the maintenance of it may have helped the evolution

of the human family. However, if the baby is treated as a foreign object, how does it survive?

Moreover, why would have natural selection favored such a tug of war between mother and

fetus? One may wonder why such a conflict may take place altogether. We have to realize that

the fetus shares only 50% of the mother’s genes, and to raise such offspring may interfere with

cost-effectiveness. David Haig states in his article “Genetic conflicts in human pregnancy” that:

The fetus obtains all its nutrients and disposes of all its wastes via its mothers blood. It
Shares every breath that its mother takes and every meal that its mother eats. It draws on the same
food reserves when times are hard. During the course of human evolution, different allocations of
resources between a mother’s needs and those of her fetus will have had profound consequences,
particularly when food was limited. The greater the amount taken by the fetus, the greater its birth
weight, but less its mother would have had for other purposes. Lighter babies would have had a
reduced probability of survival, but costly pregnancies would have increased the mother
vulnerability to diseases, reduced her ability to care for existing children, and decreased her
chances of reproducing again. What was best for the get us would not always have been best for
its mother… (496).

From the sexual act, the strongest individuals are selected for survival. Amongst an

average amount of “60 million [sperm] per milliliter in the Western world” (1) one single male

gamete cell will merge with a female gamete and create the beginnings of human life. From day

one, the newly created cell is seen by the mother’s defense mechanisms as an invader. Her body

will therefore fight against it. The arms race has only begun.

According to an article written by Ross E. Rocklin, M.D. Harvard Medical School, John

L. Kitzmiller, M.D. Harvard Medical School and Michael D. Kaye, Ph.D. Sydney University

“semen contains many antigenic components from the testis and accessory glands of the male

reproductive tract as well as spermatozoa” (376); which suggests an early fight from the female

body to reject the foreign cells. Strong selection is demonstrated in the fact that only “5% of
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sperm migrate upwards from the vagina in mammals; in the uterus, most spermatozoa undergo

phagocytosis by leukocytes within a few hours” (376). Only one of the millions of sperm will be

responsible for fecundation.

Early problems

Once implantation nears (around the seventh day after ovulation –Haig 498- ), according

to Rocklin, Kitzmiller and Kaye, “the zona pellucida [of the fertilized ova] is lost, and the outer

trophectoderm seems to lose its non-H-2 antigenic determinants along with a decrease in

concanavalin A and colloidal iron binding (22, 24). It is interesting that this occurs at the time of

first intimate contact with maternal tissues, and in conjunction with the development of

polyploidy of the outer trophoblast cells and the appearance of their phagocytic and secretory

properties” (377-378). In other words, the newly form cell arms down in order to attach itself to

the uterus and initiate the forming of the placenta. Indeed this very process of survival may

“show” to the prospective mother that the surviving cell is actually worth carrying for the

subsequent nine months. The fetus does not naturally gain access to resources; rather it earns the

right to share in the mother’s nutrients through very aggressive procedures.

However, placenta formation and fetus development does not end the conflict mather and

fetus, it rather complicates it. According to the David Haig, one of the main reasons this occurs is

due to a three part genetic count present in the mother during pregnancy. The mother possesses a

set of genes of her own, half of her genes are present in the fetus, and the other is not; while there

is a foreign presence of half of the father’s genes. Mr. Haig supposes that while the half of the

mothers genes present in the fetus would be acting towards a successful pregnancy (due to their

presence in the future offspring), the second half of her genes not present in the fetus will not be
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benefitted by a successful pregnancy; they are therefore better benefited by a miscarriage that

will make the mother mate again, with a one in two chance of the unrepresented genes being

present within the new offspring (497). In other words, the mother’s genes not represented in the

new baby have a vested interest (if I am allowed to provide a personality to said genes) in

pregnancy failure; and thus may react to promote a hostile environment for the fetus.

Blood supply

The battle is not only in regards to genes but also hormonal. To establish a blood supply,

the fetus uses syncyiotrophoblast and cytothropoblast cells to invade the mother’s endometrium

(the mucus membrane lining the uterus) and “aggregate around the maternal spiral arteries” and

causing the “breakdown of the endothelium and smooth muscle of the arterial walls” which

results in such vessels being unable to use “maternal vasoconstrictors” (Haig 499). The result is

blood supply to the fetus, giving way to maternal low blood pressure. Were it not for maternal

LGLs (large granular lymphocytes) which form 45% of the decidua (the part of the endometrium

that in higher placental mammals undergoes special modifications in preparation for and during

pregnancy and is cast off at parturition) the syncyiotrophoblast and cytothropoblast cells released

by the placenta would most certainly endanger, if not kill, the mother (Haig 505).

Throughout pregnancy, the battle enhanced by fetus development and growth ensues. The

first trimester is highly subjected to miscarriage, as if somehow the mother’s body could tell that

the investment made up to that point is still not too much to throw away. Indeed, Haig states that

a study by C. J. Roberts and C. R. Lowe, showed that an estimated 78 percent of human

conceptions never come to term, ending before the 12th week of pregnancy, many before the

mother even missed menstruation (507); on the other hand, second trimester sees miscarriage
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rarely. The investment made is now too great, and the mother’s body switches fighting modes,

from rejection to survival.

Preeclampsia

One of the rarest, yet most dangerous bi-products of pregnancy is preeclampsia. The

symptoms are defined as “hypertensive disorder peculiar to pregnancy, is associated with

proteinuria, edema, and at times coagulation abnormalities. It occurs primarily in nulliparas,

usually after the 20th gestational week and most frequently near term.” (Lindheimer, Katz, 273,

“Pathophysiology of Preeclampsia”). In their study, Lindheimer and Katz related the disease to

Hypertension (275) and discuss the evidence available for such symptoms to show due to high

levels of prostaglandins, found in the pregnant uterus (277). The prostaglandins found in the

uterus are of the E and I series, which counter angiotensin II, the hormone in the mother that is

responsible for controlling vasoconstructive reactions to too much blood supply being taken from

the mother to the fetus (277); this study suggests that the fetus fights for control of the mother’s

blood supply. Usually the mother is able to counter the production of prostaglandins with

angiotensin II, however, when the body is unable to respond, or overwhelmed, preeclampsia may

develop, which in turn may grow to a full Eclampsia scenario. If not treated, the mother would

most certainly loose her life due to her condition.

Evolutionary hypotheses in relation to birth

Having seen evolutionary benefits to the mother-fetus conflict and some of that which it’s

fought over, it is easy to see that the joy of pregnancy is not an easy one. We may wonder what

other effects this had on our early ancestors and their evolution. It is my hypothesis that while

early apes remained in the trees female pregnancy was a stable situation so long as the female
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was able to see predators early enough to be able to climb a nearby tree. However, with the jump

(or should we say plunge) from treetop to forest floor, such female would have been at a clear

disadvantage without bipedal locomotion and other aids. Changes had to be made for

adaptability; Leslie C. Aiello and Jonathan C. K. Wells mention in their article (“Energetics and

the Evolution of the Genus Homo”) that “physiological advantages may have been particularly

important to pregnant females because of their increased susceptibility to heat stress as the result

of their increased weight for height as the pregnancy developed (324).” Given pregnant females

hindrances, natural selection would have favored a bipedal species with a more advance social

system, one that could assist the female with her pregnancy. Such social system would require a

big brain that would be able to analyze the consequences of alliances, friendships or war. The

development of a big brain created a fundamental problem for our ancestors however: would be

develop the brain while outside the womb or while in it? It would seem that the fetus stays within

the mother until the limits of growth and brain development are reached; should an infant’s head

grow any larger prior to birth, the baby would most likely kill the mother in the birthing process.

While many other theories are in place in regards to brain evolution, Terrance W. Deacon

a Biological Anthropology and Linguistics Professor Ph.D. at Harvard University would argue

that “the evidence for these trends and the theoretical assumptions about homologies,

progression, size increase and cortical neogenesis have been shown to be seriously flawed”

(675). While the physical evolution of the brain is very open-ended, I believe one of the

ecological reasons for the physical developments of the brain was pregnancy indeed. Once a

social system stable enough was provided and bipedal locomotion was enabled, our early

hominin ancestors had to develop a brand new system for development due to the increased costs

of survival in a flat world rather than a tree environment. In his article “The Social Brain: Mind,
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Language, and Society in Evolutionary Perspective”, R. I. M. Dunbar proposes that “These costs,

which increase proportionately (but not necessarily linearly) as group size increases, reflect both

the ecological and reproductive costs of living in close proximity to more individuals. Direct

ecological costs reflect the energetic and time costs of the increased day journey lengths needed

to accommodate extra individuals' feeding requirements, whereas the indirect costs reflect the

disruptions to foraging consequent of contests over access to food. For females, these latter costs

may be reflected directly in reduced fertility and lower birth rates (170)”. Such developments, in

accord with larger social groups and facial pragmatism, may have aided brain development prior

to leaving the womb. Brain growth however, was limited by the ability of the mother to give

birth to offspring with such highly developed brains. Since the brain size would have increased,

it would have made the process of birth through the narrower female human birth canal

complicated. Henry M. McHenry explains:

Hips transform dramatically between Australopithecus and Homo… The pelvic girdles

show key bipedal adaptations, such as shortening of the pelvic blades and anterior rotation of the

sacrum… there are conspicuous differences between Australopithecus and Homo that are

important but harder to explain in terms of genetic alterations. The most obvious change from

Australopithecus to Homo is in relative hip-joint size. Figure 1 plots pelvic height against

acetabular width to illustrate how very small the hips were in Australopithecus and how human-

like H. rudolfensis was in this respect. But there were interesting changes between the hips of

early Homo and later Homo as well. Changes in the pattern of gait explain most of the changes in

pelvic morphology between the last common ancestor of African apes and humans, but changes

within the human lineage also involve birth. The shortening of the pelvic blades to make

bipedalism possible reduced the front-to-back dimension of the birth canal. This may (Berge et al

1984, Tague & Lovejoy 1986, Berge 1991) or may not (Leutenegger 1987) have affected the birth

process of small-brained australopithecines, but it became a painful reality to Homo. It probably

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explains the difference between early and late Homo hips. (“Autralopithecus to Homo:

Transformations in Body and Mind, 132-33)

Therefore, along with adaptation to birth under the new “developments” provided by

Natural Selection, hip size helped determine our brain size and pregnancy development.

Conclusion

While we cannot name a single trait that helped us developed into who we are today, it

would seem evident that the mother-offspring conflict did affect females and how natural

selection may have favored development of the later Paranthropus and Australopith species. The

long gestational period of the human female can be easily attributed to brain development prior

to birth, and both fetus and mother seem to have developed ways to counteract the negative

effects of such a large “foreign” body inhabiting her for such a long period. One could argue that

the ability (or inability) of the mother to adapt to the changes that their bodies were going

through, while also adapting to bipedalism, may have influenced the development of the modern

human family and explain some of the newly formed theories for human evolution like U of U’s

own Grandmother Hypothesis.

It would seem that looking at the broad spectrum of possibilities available; we must reach

a conclusion on how the modern Homo species evolved based on an accumulation of changes

brought in by fluctuations in weather, female pregnancy, social behavior and physiological

adaptations that, favored by natural selection, ended up accumulating into an already remarkable

species. We are the result of circumstance just as much as we are the result of our own brilliance.
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Works Cited

Aiello, Leslie C. and Jonathan (Department of Anthropology, University College London) C. K.

Wells (Chilhood Nutrition Research Center, London) “Energetics and the Evolution of
the Genus Homo” Annual Review Anthropology 2002. 31:323–38.
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.anthro.31.040402.085403
Deacon, Terrence W. “Rethinking Mammalian Brain Evolution” American Zoologist, Vol. 30,
No. 3, Science as a Way of Knowing: Neurobiology and Behavior (1990), pp. 629-705
Oxford University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3883552.pdf
Dunbar, R.I.M, (School of Biological Studies, University of Liverpool) “The Social Brain: Mind,
Language and Society in Evolutionary Perspective” Annual Review of Anthropology,
2003. 32:163-81.
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org.tproxy01.lib.utah.edu/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.anthro
.32.061002.093158
Haig, David PhD “Genetic conflicts in human pregnancy” Museum of Comparative Zoology,
Harvard University The Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 68, No. 4 (Dec., 1993), pp.
495-532 http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3037249.pdf
Lindheimer, Marshall D., MD, Adrian I. Katz, MD “Pathophysiology of preeclampsia”
Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Medicine, the University of Chicago
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.me.32.020181.001421
McHenry, Henry M., Coffing, Katherine (University of California) “Australopithecus To Homo:
Transformations in Body and Mind.” Annual Review of Anthropology, 2000 29:125-46.
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org.tproxy01.lib.utah.edu/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.anthro
.29.1.125
Robers, C.J. and C. R. Lowe. 1975. “Where have all the conceptions gone?” Lancet, 1:498-499
Rocklin, Ross E, M.D. 1 Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Robert Breck
Brigham Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02120 John L. Kitzmiller, M.D. Department of
Obstetrics and Gynecology, Harvard Medical School, Boston Hospital for Women,
Boston, Massachusetts 02115 Michael D. Kaye, Ph.D. Department of Obstetrics and
Gynecology, Sydney University, Sydney, Australia “Immunobiology of the maternal-
fetal relationship” Annual Review of Medicine 1979. 30:375-404
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.me.30.020179.002111
Watson, J. C. (Manchester University), R.C. Payne (The Royal Veterinary College), A.T.
Chamberlain (Sheffield University), R.K. Jones (Salford University) and W.I. Sellers
(also Manchester University). http://www.sciencedirect.com
Unknown Author, “Semen Analysis” Online Publication by Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_count#Sperm_count