# Do people who can't swim really drown quickly in calm water? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 13, 2009, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-who-cant-swim-really-drown-quickly-in-calm-water/496294 "2009-05-13T14:59:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2009, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-who-cant-swim-really-drown-quickly-in-calm-water/496294/81 "2009-05-16T04:09:10Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > Our big brains get us into trouble here. People panic, they drown. Every other animal on the planet I can think of if you throw them in the water they will swim out just fine That’s deep. > [@Rhodes](#): > > Last week my 4-year-old nephew stepped in too deep. He didn’t panic. Didn’t make any attempt to swim or to get out, either. He just held his breath and stood on the bottom of the pool, calmly waiting for me to notice him. Hey, I did something pretty similar when I was 5. Too bad no one let me stay there to see what would happen. What’s weird is I didn’t, in the slightest, realize I was holding my breath. Afterwards I just figured I must’ve been breathing underwater. Instinct. > [@](#): > > For example, infants can acquire languages instinctively, but adults can not. > [@](#): > > Acquiring language is a learned behavior, not an instinct. Infants are just really good about it because their brains are extremely plastic and they’re eager to find a way to commun You know, trying to learn language now, I think there’s truth to both those statements. Half. No, four-fifths of my difficulty in learning a language now “naturally” by just watching TV or listening to people is that I can’t let go, calm down, and let the foreign words enter my brain and linger briefly and just leave. I strain, repeat what i hear in my head, etc., like the non-swimmer flailing. If I try, I can repeat this thought-pattern when listening to _English_ and lose my ability to understand. So, I haven’t been successful in learning “naturally” like a youngster. Although trying to listen to foreign words ‘naturally’ ends up a sort of meditation. ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2009, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-who-cant-swim-really-drown-quickly-in-calm-water/496294/82 "2009-05-16T04:14:03Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > That’s part of it. the rest of it is that for other animals swimming and walking using exactly the same motions. IOW if an animal panics and tries to run to shore or simply climb out of the water it will swim to shore by accident. I’ve seen numerous dogs that swam by quite obviouly trying to climb out of the water, lifting each paw free at each stroke. Humans, because we are bipedal, can’t do that. > > Which also explains why babies can manage to swim. They aren’t doing anything more than trying to crawl out of the water. That’s a good argument, but having tortured my dog a bit in the bath I can tell you paddling is a pretty different motion from walking/running. These days, when I hold my dog near water he’ll start to air-paddle out of nowhere, and it’s a motion where he folds the front leg, brings it up, extends it, and sharply pushes down. That’s as related to walking for dogs as treading is related to walking for humans. Seems like he knows it by instinct. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2009, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-who-cant-swim-really-drown-quickly-in-calm-water/496294/83 "2009-05-16T13:45:49Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > Acquiring language is a learned behavior, not an instinct. Infants are just really good about it because their brains are extremely plastic and they’re eager to find a way to communicate. The great majority of linguists disagree with you. (Admittedly, the contingent of linguists who agree with you is presently growing. But they’re wrong. 😛 ) ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2009, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-who-cant-swim-really-drown-quickly-in-calm-water/496294/84 "2009-05-16T13:53:42Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > Acquiring language is a learned behavior, not an instinct. Infants are just really good about it because their brains are extremely plastic and they’re eager to find a way to communicate. Besides, whether language learning is instinctive or not, you’ve simply explained how it can be that infants have capabilities lacking in adults. If infants’ brains are more plastic than adults, then maybe that explains infants’ being able to handle being in the water with more facility than adults. Their brain adapts to the situation instantly, while adults’ do not. My point, as I said, is that from the fact that swimming is “instinctive” in babies, it doesn’t follow that it’s instinctive in adults. Things change as we age. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-who-cant-swim-really-drown-quickly-in-calm-water/496294.md?page=4)