How intelligent are baby ponies?

[pinkiefan1287 610]

This is something I brought up in a different topic, but I want to make it a main focus. 

 

So how intelligent is a baby pony from a real baby? I mostly ask because, it seems that everyone thinks that just because Pound Cake and Pumpkin Cake are babies that they are the same as real human babies and when they grow up, the 2 are just going to forget that they can use magic or can fly. But it seems in the episode that Pound and Pumpkin are much more intelligent and are developing much faster than a real baby does.

 

I have some examples that show that Pound Cake and Pumpkin Cake are nothing like real babies and well not develop in the same way.

 

First, Pound Cake and Pumpkin Cake are already walking with in a mouth. True, to what have read a real pony will start walking with in a few hours after birth. So this works. But this does show that they develop much faster than a real baby. They can even stand up on their back legs with no problem. So if this movement can stay with them, who says they will forget about flying and magic?

 

Next, when Pinkie Pie is singing her songs to the twins they are lessening to her and are focused on her. A real baby does not even have any lessening skills. You can sing to a baby, but they aren't going to applauded or show signs of liking it at or disliking it at first. It would take time before they know this is a thing they like. Pound and Pumpkin lesson to Pinkie and enjoy her singing. They even showed signs of not liking something and giving her a negative look. So this shows they have a pretty good understanding of what is going around them.

 

 

Pound Cake and Pumpkin Cake can eat both liquid and solid foods. I don't know much about this, but to what I know it takes about 2 mouths before a baby can eat real food.

 

 

 

Pound and Pumpkin are able to say Pinkie Pie's name at the end of the episode. Most babes will take many years before talking and much longer to say words right with out any problems.

 

 

Now here is something I find very important that the twins do that show signs of their intelligence and that the emotions they show. Pound and Pumpkin have many different emotions in the episode. They show happiness, sadness, even anger. At the end of the episode both Cake twins show the sign of guilt. They feel really guilty for what they did to Pinkie Pie. Feeling guilt is a pretty big emotion for a baby to have, when it would take many years before a child would understand what guilt is. 

 

Happy, Sad, Angry 

 

Gilt

 

This last one I have is not a big one, but I do feel like bring it up. When Mr. and Mrs. Cake leave for the party, Pound and Pumpkin start crying because their mommy and daddy left. So this shows that the twins know who their parents are. True, I am not a parent and I am not sure when a baby learns about parents and stuff like that. But I do feel it would take sometime before a baby knows who their parents are. It also seems like this is the first time the twins have been apart from Mr. and Mrs. Cake.

 

Where did they go?

 

Now to what I have show Pound and Pumpkin are nothing like human babies and develop in a whole other way. I will admit that they may need training to maintain their powers or to get better at it, but overall I still think that Pound Cake and Pumpkin Cake will be able to remember that they can use it. 

 

UPDATE

Well after todays episode, we can say baby ponies are very smart. In the episode Apple Family Reunion, during a flash back we got to see baby Applejack. She was so cute. Now in the episode AppleJack talked in this episode and she looks so young. Now of course we don't know how old she is in this part. She could be 5 mouths old or maybe even a year old. Still this part shows us that baby ponies do grow much faster and have a great understanding of the world around them. She even ate an apple fritter which should be very hard for a baby pony to eat.

 

 

Edited December 25, 2012 by pinkiefan1287

[Jadefire 2,797]

The Cake Twins don't operate like human babies, but rather closer to human toddlers around 1 to 2 years of age, where they have basic cognitive development like you had said (paying attention to things, feeling emotions like anger and sadness). The main one is getting distraught and crying when their parents leave: seperation anxiety is a big thing for very young children.

 

The main thing I found unrealistic for that episode was the Twins feeling guilt for driving Pinkie Pie to cry like that: young children don't have very well-developed senses of empathy until they're closer to 4 years of age (maybe 3, if you're not cynical), which is older than how the Cake Twins are portrayed.

 

Tl;dr: The Cake Twins behave more like young toddlers than older babies.

[mycarhasaMoustache 449]

I really have no idea they are probably developing the way they are because its convenient to the story and since the show was originally aimed at children it was going to be much more entertaining to have babys that can walk and stuff instead of just laying there. Plus if you put too much details about babys then children will have more questions witch must be a pain for parents but I would say their intelligence level is somewhere between a human toddler and an actual baby pony.

[SOHCAHTOA 51]

Sorry for bringing this up here, since you started a new thread to change the focus, but I've just thought of something. You know how we were discussing wheter Scootaloo could or not fly in the other thread? Sure you do. My point is, if a pony is capable of remembering abilities from when they're babies, wouldn't that mean that Scootaloo would be able to fly? Unless she never flew as a baby, but as I have elaborated in the other thread, that's nigh to impossible.

 

Another thing we have to take into question is this: Imagine that pegasi really existed in our word, and could fly within a few hours of birth. However, not MLP pegasi, the mythological pegasi, that are irrational animals. Remember how in the other thread what I elaborated about how humans forget their instincts? Well, that would never happen to our hypothetical real pegasus, as he is an irrational animal. Humans forget their instincts once they have enough memories to form a mind. That's what your mind is made of: Memories and the capacity to think. Irrational animals are incapable of thought processes, therefore, regardless of the amount of memories they acumulate, they'll never form a mind, and therefore they'll never lose their instincts, and so the hypothetical real pegasus would never forget how to fly. Ponies in the MLP universe are different. They're rational animals, and therefore they will form minds and forget their instincts.

 

But I have realized that up to this point I haven't actually touched your argument, and for that I apologize, this was not my intention. So without further ado:

 

Reexamining their debut episode, I agree with most of what you said. They're much more intelligent than human babies would be at that age. They definetely aren't flying and using magic by instinct at that point. They seen capable of basic thought processes, they have formed minds. However, I refuse to believe that to be the case for all baby ponies. To me it seens much more likely that the baby Cakes are prodigies than believing that all pegasi could fly and all unicorn could use magic at that early age. After all, Scootaloo can't fly, and Twilight had trouble with even flipping a book page with magic when she was much older then Pumpkin Cake.

Edited December 19, 2012 by SOHCAHTOA

[Twi Rubix 726]

Well, I think your onto somethin there. I did feel the twins were pretty intelligent for their age. Aside from their constant crying and such, they did feel guilty for making Pinkie cry, and they wanted to make her feel better, which I'm pretty sure babies a month old wouldn't think of doing.

 

As for other baby ponies in general, well I can't really say anything about that since I've yet to see another baby pony in the show. (At least one with more than 10 seconds of screen time.)

[pinkiefan1287 610]

Sorry for bringing this up here, since you started a new thread to change the focus, but I've just thought of something. You know how we were discussing wheter Scootaloo could or not fly in the other thread? Sure you do. My point is, if a pony is capable of remembering abilities from when they're babies, wouldn't that mean that Scootaloo would be able to fly? Unless she never flew as a baby, but as I have elaborated in the other thread, that's nigh to impossible.

 

Another thing we have to take into question is this: Imagine that pegasi really existed in our word, and could fly within a few hours of birth. However, not MLP pegasi, the mythological pegasi, that are irrational animals. Remember how in the other thread what I elaborated about how humans forget their instincts? Well, that would never happen to our hypothetical real pegasus, as he is an irrational animal. Humans forget their instincts once they have enough memories to form a mind. That's what your mind is made of: Memories and the capacity to think. Irrational animals are incapable of thought processes, therefore, regardless of the amount of memories they acumulate, they'll never form a mind, and therefore they'll never lose their instincts, and so the hypothetical real pegasus would never forget how to fly. Ponies in the MLP universe are different. They're rational animals, and therefore they will form minds and forget their instincts.

 

But I have realized that up to this point I haven't actually touched your argument, and for that I apologize, this was not my intention. So without further ado:

 

Reexamining their debut episode, I agree with most of what you said. They're much more intelligent than human babies would be at that age. They definetely aren't flying and using magic by instinct at that point. They seen capable of basic thought processes, they have formed minds. However, I refuse to believe that to be the case for all baby ponies. To me it seens much more likely that the baby Cakes are prodigies than believing that all pegasi could fly and all unicorn could use magic at that early age. After all, Scootaloo can't fly, and Twilight had trouble with even flipping a book page with magic when she was much older then Pumpkin Cake.

 

It could be Scootaloo had her disability so she would have not memories of flying.

 

Now as for other babes and powers, it could also be where they live. I was always under the thought that baby pegasus who live in Cloudsdale would be able to fly much faster, because they are in an area which requires them to fly all the time. So u could say that the time it took Pound maybe cut in half or it may take them 3 weeks after birth. Then after a certain age or a few years they will begin training to just be better at flying.

 

Same thing could be said for a baby unicorn born in Canterlot could also use magic better, because the town has high level magic users. So they could use magic for a while or use it for along time, but just learn how to control the powerful magic they have or be able to do other spells they could not do as babies.

 

Now I feel like the big thing we need to know more about is, what is a magic serge? When I first heard it I was thinking back to how Twilight and Rarity could not control the magic they were using, but Pumpkin Cake seemed to have fool control over it while Twilight and Rarity had no control. Still just an idea.

 

Also for flying maybe learn how a baby Pegasus grows. Like do they need to eat certain foods so they will keep flying or if they do get to big will they be grounded until the age more?

Edited December 20, 2012 by pinkiefan1287

[SOHCAHTOA 51]

Hmmm... Interesting. Yes, I do believe it would come faster to those in areas where these abilities are basically requirements. Regarding the idea of Magic Surges, I believe it's the same term used to describe two unrelated events. I have formulated a somewhat complicated theory that can explain both, but I'm still struggling for the right words. Well, I'll try my best to explain it here:

 

Ok you know how in physics there's potential and kinetic energy? Well, that's how I imagine magic to work. Let's see... ooh, I know! Let's pick as an example magic points or mana in rpgs. This is potential magic, the capacity to use magic. Note that it has no effect on the physical world at all. Then there's what I'll call applied magic, which is magic actually affecting the world. Knowing a shrinking spell means you have potential magic to use one, but it's only considered applied magic during the instants you're actually shrinking something, for example.

 

Now, it's simple from here isn't it? Babies have Potential Magic Surges, and they can turn that potential magic into applied magic however they want. Unicorns at the age of fillies or colts, however, get Applied Magic Surges. They didn't choose it to happen that way, it just does, almost as if the magic itself was sentient.

 

Huh... did that made sense? I'm no good at explaining things. I hope you guys understood what I meant

[pinkiefan1287 610]

Hmmm... Interesting. Yes, I do believe it would come faster to those in areas where these abilities are basically requirements. Regarding the idea of Magic Surges, I believe it's the same term used to describe two unrelated events. I have formulated a somewhat complicated theory that can explain both, but I'm still struggling for the right words. Well, I'll try my best to explain it here:

 

Ok you know how in physics there's potential and kinetic energy? Well, that's how I imagine magic to work. Let's see... ooh, I know! Let's pick as an example magic points or mana in rpgs. This is potential magic, the capacity to use magic. Note that it has no effect on the physical world at all. Then there's what I'll call applied magic, which is magic actually affecting the world. Knowing a shrinking spell means you have potential magic to use one, but it's only considered applied magic during the instants you're actually shrinking something, for example.

 

Now, it's simple from here isn't it? Babies have Potential Magic Surges, and they can turn that potential magic into applied magic however they want. Unicorns at the age of fillies or colts, however, get Applied Magic Surges. They didn't choose it to happen that way, it just does, almost as if the magic itself was sentient.

 

Huh... did that made sense? I'm no good at explaining things. I hope you guys understood what I meant

 

 

So for Pound and Pumpkin it could be said that they are prodigies because they come from Ponyville, which could be called the middle town. It may have a high number of earth ponies living there and a few pegasus and unicorns, but you could say it would be a low chance that they would have babies who would have a high level flyers or magic users. Due to the fact that flying and magic aren't used everyday in the town. 

 

Now for your idea. I understand like 50% of it.

 

I do have an idea as to how surges work. Baby unicorns have smaller bodes and have a lot of energy, to what we saw in the episode. So it could be that they store up a lot of magic and when they use it they do all kinds of different spells. It may become harder for them to do when they get older, because they can't store up that same power. The next part is how they know the spells.

 

Now Pumpkin has 2 way in order to use magic. Back to the part about her being focused and being able to pay attention. Most likely she knows she a unicorn and has seen other unicorns us levitation spells. So she would know that she could use that magic in order to get something. Kinda like she did for her toys. 

 

Still that one is still in the works, but this one might be closer.

 

Maybe baby magic is more of an automatic thing. All she has to do it think of what she wants and her magic will respond in that way. 

 

When Pumpkin wanted the chicken in the closet. She was most likely thinking, I want the chicken in there and I want to there. So her magic respond with a teleporting spell. Also with the butterfly toy. She was thinking, I want that over here and her magic responded with a levitation spell.

 

Still this idea may not because it seemed like she knew that magic was going to happen. 

 

Well, I think your onto somethin there. I did feel the twins were pretty intelligent for their age. Aside from their constant crying and such, they did feel guilty for making Pinkie cry, and they wanted to make her feel better, which I'm pretty sure babies a month old wouldn't think of doing.

 

As for other baby ponies in general, well I can't really say anything about that since I've yet to see another baby pony in the show. (At least one with more than 10 seconds of screen time.)

Well during todays episode we got to see baby Applejack and she was talking and eating a apple fritter. So that most mean that baby ponies do age differently in the show.

Edited December 20, 2012 by pinkiefan1287