The Operation Ouch! episode \u2018How to Train a Brain\u2019 which aired on Wednesday 3 March 2021 saw Dr Xand van Tulleken investigate the differences between human and animal babies. <\/p>\n
Operation Ouch!<\/a>\u00a0is a comedy children’s television series shown on CBBC for children aged five and above. Doctors Chris, Xand and Ronx explore the ins and outs of the human body in a variety of eye-opening experiments.<\/p>\n Filmed in a socially distanced way on the Canterbury campus<\/a> Dr Xand met \u2018Evolution Expert\u2019 Dr Sarah Johns<\/a> in the Charles Darwin laboratory, to find out why human babies don\u2019t spend as long inside their mums as other animals.<\/p>\n Sarah explained that because humans are bipedal, our pelvis has quite a narrow diameter. \u201cSo, what we wouldn\u2019t want to have happen is the baby to develop too big a head, that then wouldn\u2019t fit through the mother\u2019s pelvis.\u201d<\/p>\n Growing a baby is also energetically costly. At the stage that the baby can\u2019t take enough energy from the mother that it needs, it\u2019s born and then can use its mothers\u2019 milk to grow and develop instead of using the mother\u2019s resources from her body.<\/p>\n There may also be social benefits by being born at an earlier stage in comparison to other animals Dr Johns said.<\/p>\n In Series 9 Episode 9<\/a> the doctors also met a very special elephant calf, revealed how to train your brain and said hello to Ouch Patient Evie, who has a blood disease called aplastic anaemia.<\/p>\n