Previously, there was a theory that brain size reflected cognitive abilities, and based on this
In the new work, biologists, evolutionary statisticians and anthropologists examined how mammals' brain size changed in relation to body size over long periods of evolution.
Instead of using size databrain, the authors took information about the endocranial volume of the skulls obtained from the analysis of 107 fossils, among which are the skulls of ancient whales and the oldest monkey skull ever found.
It turned out that the species with the largestthe relative size of the brain - humans, dolphins and elephants - went to this by different evolutionary paths. Thus, elephants grew in size over time, and their brains grew even faster than their bodies. Dolphins, on the other hand, became smaller and smaller, and their brains also decreased.
These findings, the authors argue, call for a re-evaluation of the deeply entrenched paradigm that uses brain-to-body size as a measure of intelligence in any species.
Many mammals with large brains, suchlike elephants, dolphins and great apes, large body sizes are also observed. But this is not always the case. The Californian sea lion, for example, has a relatively small brain size in contrast to their outstanding intelligence.
Jeroen Smyers, an evolutionary biologist at Stony Brook University in New York
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