What Do Rug Rats Eat?

Baby J puts everything in her mouth. Her particular favorite seems to be little clumps of carpet fibers that interbreed with the dust bunnies in our home. I'm not sure what you call these strange, soft, nuggets but I know for sure that they are not suitable for baby consumption. Part of my daily dad duties include fishing non-food items like these out of baby's mouth.

It gets me wondering...

What evolutionary advantage does this give us as a species? Isn't it a bad thing that we each go through a developmental stage where we put everything we find lying around into our mouths? Wouldn't that reduce the viability of our species?

It wouldn't seem so to me but humans have been around for a few hundred thousand years so I guess it serves some benefit. Maybe in a system so complex and complicated my feeble brain can't comprehend its intricacies the fact that I chase Baby J around removing balls of lint out of her mouth is actually counterproductive biologically speaking. Maybe it's a survival of the fittest sort of thing. If you're fit enough to get nutrition out of dust balls you'll survive better.

Maybe this is the case but I still won't let my baby eat household detritus she finds on the floor. Screw you evolution!

Listening To: Too High to Die by The Meat Puppets