I have no idea what the right word is…but I meant “to have features like a baby”. Anyway.
A long while back I heard a theory about how when we domesticate at least SOME animals (or all?) we make them more baby-like, and so they look a little different in the skull, and high desire for play even as an adult, and such.
(I know sheep and goats and cow-type critters appreciate having toys to play with, so maybe it’s more domesticates than just pets?)
I also heard that at least some people wondered if we humans were neonating ourselves, thus an increased desire for play as adults, without a strong tapering off, and IIRC some physical things too that I don’t recall.
I’m having issues getting a good googling about this, and thought perhaps the scholarly ones here might know off the top of their heads what the current status is of the idea. I like the idea, but there wasn’t too much information available to me when I first heard of it, and I never saw anything about it again so I am wondering if it was thoroughly discredited in humans/in toto.
Ahh, thank you so much. Having the right vocabulary word helps a ton, haha. I am glad that human neoteny is not at least widely disparaged, and that Gould was a proponent of it (probably where I heard the idea, too).