How is Baby Yoda 50 years old but still a baby? Scientists explain

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, Baby Yoda has taken the internet by storm. The memes. The parodies. The accolades. No one can stop talking about him. Before the inevitable backlash starts, I for one am happy to enjoy this time with our new tiny green overlord.

But what about the science behind Baby Yoda? Has anyone been wondering about that? No? Well, you’re going to get a dose of it anyway, as Popular Mechanics consulted a number of noted scientists to answer questions about the Child’s development.

Namely, is he a child? We’re told in the first episode that Baby Yoda is 50 years old, but obviously he’s…a baby. The droid bounty hunter IG-11 waves this away by simply saying that “species age differently,” and fair enough. The original Yoda died at the ripe old age of 900, so clearly his people have a very long life cycle. Maybe they stay in the infant stage of life for a very long time.

But exactly how long? Is Baby Yoda infantile in every way or is he further along in his development than he lets on? That’s where the experts come in. “He likes to put things in his mouth, like small chrome knobs and frogs,” said Duke University biologist Eric Spana. “The putting-all-the-things-in-your-mouth stage in humans is at about one year, plus or minus six months. “Developmentally, Baby Yoda seems like a human one-year-old.”

Okay, so he’s developmentally equivalent to a human one-year-old? Well, maybe. Let’s look at some other indicators, like language comprehension. Baby Yoda isn’t able to say much of anything beyond baby babble. Some children say their first words as early as nine months, but the Child has had 50 years and he hasn’t said word one, so far as we know. That would fit with the “he’s about one in human years” idea.

But what about the things he can do that no one-year-old can? “[Baby Yoda] shows some solid knowledge of the situations he’s in and behaves appropriately in those situations,” said former NASA astrophysicist Jeanne Cavelos. (Yeah, they got the big guns for this article.) “He’s able to get out of his bassinet by dropping from a distance twice his height without injury and walk short distances without any assistance. He is aware and empathic with beings not of his species even when they are covered completely, including their face. He recognizes injury in others and attempts to repair it. Without given specific instructions, he knows when it is safe to leave his cradle and when it is not.”

But then how does this square with the infantile stuff he does, like waddling around everywhere?

Cavelos wonders if that may have to do with the peculiarities of Yoda’s species. Yoda, after all, rarely seemed particularly mobile. “Remember that Luke carries Yoda around in a backpack [in The Empire Strikes Back], much like a baby,” says Cavelos. “They also have fingers about half the length of human fingers, relatively speaking. So they aren’t built for tool-making either. Even making dinner for Luke Skywalker seemed to be a bit of a dexterity challenge for Yoda.”

So maybe this species just isn’t made for mobility no matter what age they are. “It may simply be our natural prejudice as humans to conclude that a creature with Baby Yoda’s appearance is a baby, since he looks somewhat like a human baby,” said Cavelos. Although there are some bits in the prequels that challenge that idea…

But if Baby Yoda is more advanced than he looks, how do we explain the poor vocabulary? Cavelos suggests it may because of Baby Yoda’s nomadic lifestyle, or perhaps his people don’t have a common tongue. “If he doesn’t know the language, there’s not much point in speaking.” Or maybe he just hasn’t had anyone setting an example for him. “He seems to spend most of his time alone in a floating egg. So maybe he lacks language role models. Children won’t learn languages without a role model.”

I’m sure we’re all looking forward to when Baby Yoda starts talking like the Mandalorian, saying no more than is necessary.

Chapter 3. The Child and the Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal) in THE MANDALORIAN, exclusively on Disney+

But why does it take so long for Baby Yoda to develop anyway? Spana has a theory:

"Since Yoda lived much, much longer than any human, we could extrapolate that he had many more cortical neurons. In humans, much of the first years of life is spent growing the size of the brain, adding neurons and adding connections between the neurons. Essentially building a brain. A bigger brain would require even more time for neurogenesis and synapse formation."

Okay, so maybe Baby Yoda is taking a while to mature because its brain will be huge when its fully developed, and requires more time to grow. I can buy that.

There’s also the question of how fast Baby Yoda will develop. As IG-11 said, species age differently. According to University of California at Riverside biology professor David Reznick, the development cycle for Yoda’s species is similar to humans in that they both have “a prolonged infancy and adolescence followed by a growth hiatus, then a growth spurt with a long adulthood.” But when exactly will Baby Yoda cross the line from toddler into child, or even young adult? Will season 3 of The Mandalorian feature Teenager Yoda, slamming his door and telling the Mandalorian that he’s not his real dad? There’s really no way to know.

“We can equate the first 50 years of his development to one human development year,” Spana said. “But we don’t know how fast he might develop those next two human developmental years so that he can be ready to enter with the other younglings who are at the same developmental stage.” Basically, Baby Yoda could stay a baby through the entire series, or he might be a full-grown adult by the season finale.

There are lots of questions about Baby Yoda yet to be answered. “Does he come from an egg, or does he develop inside a womb?” asked  Duke University biology professor Mohamed Noor. “Maybe in some way he’s more like an infant kangaroo—they don’t have placentas, so they’re ‘born’ super-early but have a prolonged ‘outside body’ developmental period before they’re more like baby mammals with which we’re more familiar.”

Then there are his abilities with the Force. Remember when he lifted that beast the Mandalorian was fighting and then immediately settled in for an extended nap?

Given that kind of power, Iowa State University associate professor of veterinary microbiology and preventive medicine Iddo Friedberg is glad Baby Yoda has such a long development cycle. “A species like that, which can use the Force while still in diapers, would require a lot of nurturing before it is let loose on the world,” he said. “Otherwise, destruction to itself and others is almost guaranteed. Think a temper tantrum where your baby can choke the family dog, or take the family landspeeder SUV off a cliff.”

Hopefully the show will be on long enough to explore some of these very important issues.

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h/t The A.V. Club