![]() ![]() He’s an elite, second-generation, ‘smoke-jumping’ squad leader. Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter llmysteries and join us on Facebook.Californian firefighter Jake ‘Supe’ Carson (John Cena) is facing a challenging and critical time. "The motives that drive fire learning are only incompletely satisfied, with the result that, throughout life, fire retains greater allure or fascination than would normally be the case."įollow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter nattyover. Fire play starts to wind down at that stage.Īccording to Fessler, here in the West, many or most of us never get to that point. They are gradually given more responsibility over the adults' fire as they grow older, and at age 7, are generally able to control fire. Ethnographic data reveals that children in most such societies study adults' control of fire from infancy, and at age 3, start experimenting with fire (including building small fires and using them to "cook" pretend food, such as mud pies). In societies in which fire is an everyday tool, kids learn these answers by age 7. The questions are: What makes fire hot? How does a small fire grow? Why are some fires very smoky? Can everything burn? How can you keep a fire small? How can you put fires out? Prior studies found that curiosity was the primary motive for the behavior, which, fire department records show, peaks at age 12.Ī 2002 study by Irene Pinsonneault of the Massachusetts Coalition for Juvenile Firesetter Intervention Program revealed children's most common questions about fire, and they're exactly the ones that would be expected to follow from an instinctual desire to learn how to build, control and use fire. ![]() A study by the psychiatrist David Kolko of the University of Pittsburgh found that about three-quarters of children set a play fire during the three-year window of the study (1999 – 2001). ![]() In the United States, children's natural inclination to learn about fire is evidenced by the hundreds of deaths that occur each year due to "fire play," or the deliberate setting of a fire for no purpose beyond the fire itself. Our brains soak up this predator and fire knowledge. For example, children are naturally curious about which animals are dangerous and which aren't, as well as which materials are flammable and which aren't, and what the consequences are of adding, removing and rearranging objects in a fire. Because both could seriously harm or kill them, evolution requires that they be interested in those subjects, Fessler argues, as a way of ensuring that they pay special attention to information obtained about them. As Fessler put it in an article in the Journal of Cognition and Culture, "The only avenue open to selection processes operating on a species as wide-ranging as ourselves was to rely on learning for the acquisition of the requisite behaviors." Ĭhildren are universally fascinated by predatory animals in a similar manner in which they are fascinated by fire. Instead, "fire learning" became the instinct. ![]() This may be because there was no universal method of fire building and control among our ancestors, who lived in diverse environments, and so there was no single method for evolution to ingrain in us. The ability must be learned during childhood. Unlike a spider that inherently knows how to weave a web, humans don't instinctively know how to produce and control fire. ![]()
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