I had three kids and I never noticed this phenomenon, but now I want to drive babies through tunnels.
I think this is what the kid is experiencing.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I had three kids and I never noticed this phenomenon, but now I want to drive babies through tunnels.
I think this is what the kid is experiencing.
That is absolutely hilarious. I know I missed ALL the cute weird car faces, given how car seats have to be put in. I wonder what else they’re doing back there when no one can see them?
The faces are funny and all, but i think the meat is in the fact that clearly this is an amazing way to get babies to stop crying. I predict the invention of a mobile thingy with a screen that plays tunnel lights.
How do you get a newborn to sleep through the night?
Drive in shifts.
This also works in pedestrian underpasses. For some reason, they’re endlessly fascinating.
“Not satisfied with killing little fishy babies, abortion-lover Paul Zachary Meyers[sic] seeks to enhance his experiments by incorporating the faces of human babies!!!!!1” ~ Actual quote. From the future.
Don’t even. My parents did that (I had colic! Which we now know was pediatric GERD!)
I can’t go anywhere in a car without falling asleep now. It’s embarrassing.
Perhaps that’s enough of a citation for the Morris Northstar?
One of the first things the linguistics prof who convinced me to change my major said to our class was, “If you become a linguist, you should give up on having children, because you won’t be able to convince your spouse to let you do the experiments you’re longing to.” Something-something-medical-ethics-blah-something. Very frustrating.
I, of course, have never wanted to do this, nor have I done it.
My (step)kids were much too old when I met them.
Oh, the eyes. THE EYES! Reminds me of those creepy “big-eyed child” paintings from the ’70’s.
They all look extremely startled – as you would, I suppose, when the world suddenly and without warning GOES AWAY AND GETS DIFFERENT – but there’s just one (about 3/4 way through?) who startles and then starts smiling excitedly (I think). Interesting variation :-)
babies and driving through tunnels…
Maybe not as spectacular as “To infinity and Beyond” but more creepy.
Solaris highway scene (1972) -Those of you who recall the dialogue of the film, will know that during the highway scene the cosmonaut reveals for Kelvin that the missing colleague from the Solaris station also had a young baby at home, correlating with the baby-like apparition the cosmonaut had seen at the Solaris ocean. The implication is that a sentient…something…has been reading the memories of the missing cosmonaut, and attempted to re-create what it found in those memories.
highway scene – contemporary streetview remake https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWYZIz1GW50&list=PL7FFAD324737CC4B9&index=2
I could not find the scene where the cosmonaut films the fog above the Solaris ocean, immediately before he spotted the apparition, but instead I found another semnet, with Italian subtitles:
Solaris by Andrej Tarkovskij – Kris’ Delirium https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6eoDCm_ilI
Should be “segment”. Duh.
It’s eerily reminiscent of their reactions to farts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO3lgO55kuY
Traumatic memories?
After all, a recent major life event for babies involved travelling through a tunnel :D
–MAB
When my sister had her kids I gave her a copy of Piaget, and suggested she experiment on them. One grew up to be an attorney, so maybe it did some damage.
My mother decided to go back to University while I was in school, so she could convert her two-year teaching certificate to a four-year Bachelors of Education degree. (With a focus on early/elementary school education.)
I still remember her getting home one day and saying that if one more of her professors mentioned Piaget, she was going to scream.
I also remember one of my own Psychology profs tell an anecdote about one of Piaget’s students trying the standard ‘pour a tall glass into a stouter glass’ test, and having the young girl tell him ‘You should try my brother, he’s got conservation already.’
carlie:
Particularly for your passengers!
So, any theories to why babies respond to tunnels this way? My immediate thought is that what we interpret as wide-eyed amazement might be, in part, a response to the instantaneous reduction in illumination levels.
“Watch the face… Just watch the face.”
Gee thanks, HuffPost, I wouldn’t have known to point my eyes at the dominant subject of focus taking up 90% of the center of the screen if you hadn’t alerted me.
Adam James:
I don’t know from babies, but in that case you’d expect a similar reaction when lighting is switched off, and presumably people would be saying “yeah, they do that at home all the time”.
It would be interesting to know whether they react this way without windows. Could be the change in sound quality, or air pressure.
I’d say “yeah they do that all the time”. I’ also say adults make faces like that quite often..
I still do.
Tunnels are neat. The color from the sodium vapor lamps, the strobe effect as you pass under them, the change in the sound compared to driving in the open. It’s just neat.
I imagine them thinking “Not another small orifice to squeeze through ! I thought I was done with that !”
I think it is the strobe effect that startles them. It’s interesting how all of their eyes widen and their mouts drop open
Thanks, PZ. Now Facebook has implanted CHEMTRAILS in my earlobes. DAMMIT!
~
Agreed!
My parents had to drive me around to get me to sleep. To this day I wonder what percentage of my lifetime carbon footprint that accounts for.
My big sister used to go out and drive fast on a stretch of road sodium vapor lamps if her son couldn’t quiet down late at night. And one of my earliest memories is of going through a tunnel. It must run in families. That’s something else you need to test,
I heard a comedy routine where they went from
driving the babby about in a car
to
running the vacuuming cleaner in the babby’s room
to
running a hair-dryer beside the crib.
I was about 6 months old when we went on our first camping holiday. My mother used to drive the car once around the campsite, park in the shade and let me sleep.
For my oldest kid, this worked perfectly fine as well. She also never ever took naps in her bed, only in the baby car seat. In fact, when the little one was born two years later we had to get a second baby car seat so #1 could keep taking her naps in one. There is something incredibly cute about 1m of kid curled up in a baby seat.
The little one, OTOH, took to screaming in the car. The only thing that would calm her was me singing (yes, you can judge her for that). Try singing nursery songs and stuff for 3 solid hours while driving…
Babies dig optic flow.
Babies must be, like, naturally high or something, man.