"Recently awarded a Dream Time Fellowship by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, Grand is working on giving Lucy better eyesight, hearing, stronger muscles and a more powerful brain. Steve hopes Lucy will be able to learn to crawl before taking those first steps and repeating simple sounds, just like other toddlers do.

Lucy's brain was built to explore ways in which machines could be given the capacity for imagination. The design of the bot's brain was guided by a key set of hunches about how such a mechanism could be artificially engineered using simulated neurons and biochemicals."

Overall, the ratio of boys to girls born dropped to 0.88. Sons require more reproductive effort than daughters. "They grow a bit faster, they're bigger when they're born," Mace says. Males are also less likely to survive if malnourished as children, and stunted males are less attractive as potential mates.