
How Humans Evolved Supersize Brains - retupmoc01
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151110-evolution-of-big-brains/
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simiano
There is also this awesome talk by Suzana Herculano-Houzel (mentioned in the
article)

[http://www.ted.com/talks/suzana_herculano_houzel_what_is_so_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/suzana_herculano_houzel_what_is_so_special_about_the_human_brain)

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restalis
I am a little disappointed to find no comparison to the dolphin brain in the
talk about the number of neurons! Why elephant? If it was about the size it
could have been the animal with the largest brain out there (which happens to
be a cetacean, like dolphins)!

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omalleyt
Yup! And the article incorrectly states that humans have more cortical neurons
than any other animal. Pilot whales (a misnomer, they're dolphins) have more
cortical neurons than humans:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_n...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_neurons#Cerebral_cortex)

Which is especially important because the article takes as given that the
number of cortical neurons is what makes humans special.

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retupmoc01
wikipedia doesn't always have all the answers:
[https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151110-evolution-of-big-
bra...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151110-evolution-of-big-
brains/#comment-361136)

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tomcam
My wife often observes that I lack a supersize brain.

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swamp40
I like this quote: _A few years later, the anthropologist Richard Wrangham
built on this idea, arguing that the invention of cooking was crucial to human
brain evolution. Soft, cooked foods are much easier to digest than tough raw
ones, yielding more calories for less gastrointestinal work._

So along that line, the massive recent increase in high-sugar food/drinks and
fast-food restaurants like McDonald's should be fueling another leap in brain
size!

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CapitalistCartr
Planet of the Apes here we come. We should have a second uplifted species of
ape by mid century.

