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To gain support, children use signals to communicate their needs and wants to parents. Infant signals of need, particularly infant cries, have been extensively studied in diverse populations. However, the full range of potential child signals of need, which extend beyond cries, has rarely been investigated in a single study of children of all ages. To help fill this gap, we collected mother and other primary caregiver reports of three common types of child signaling from 131 families with 263 children on Utila, a small island off the coast of Honduras. In exploratory analyses, we found that child signaling was common in both sexes and across all ages, although it decreased with age and neighborhood quality and increased with the frequency of conflict between children and caretakers. Consistent with signaling theory, children who were sad more frequently were perceived as needier within the household and were more likely to receive investment. Caregivers were less likely to respond positively in situations of family conflict or child transgressions, and more likely for injuries and illness. Our results suggest that evolutionary theories of signaling can help explain patterns of child sadness, crying, and temper tantrums. 

Porous cranial lesions (cribra cranii and cribra orbitalia) are widely used by archaeologists as skeletal markers of poor child health. However, their use has not been validated with systematic data from contemporary populations, where there has been little evidence of these lesions or their health relevance. Using 375 in vivo computed tomography scans from a cohort-representative sample of adults aged 40+ years from the Bolivian Amazon, among food-limited, high-mortality forager-farmers, we identified cribra cranii on 46 (12.3%) and cribra orbitalia on 23 (6%). Cribra orbitalia was associated with several hallmarks of compromised immune function, including fewer B cells, fewer naïve CD4⁺T cells, a lower CD4⁺/CD8⁺T cell ratio, and higher tuberculosis risk. However, neither lesion type predicted other physician-diagnosed respiratory diseases, other markers of cell-mediated immunity, or hemoglobin values. While cribra orbitalia shows promise as a skeletal indicator of health challenges, our findings do not support the continued practice of using these lesions to infer anemia in adults.