Notes from the first 400 weeks

The sea turtle’s first crawl

A baby loggerhead hatches with a brain smaller than a pea. The few hours it takes her to crawl down the beach are the only chance she will ever get to imprint the magnetic signature of her natal beach — a memory that will guide her thousands of miles across an ocean decades later. A short essay on what one-shot windows in biology reveal about the first 400 weeks of your child’s life.