The Wikipedia article listing number of neurons in the cerebral cortex shows humans as significantly higher than whales, even though raw brain size may look better for whales. Wikipedia also describes an encephalization quotient which takes account of the fact that the brain is used for bodily functions, and on which whales don’t score as highly as they may seem to from brain size.
The Wikipedia article listing number of neurons in the cerebral cortex shows humans as significantly higher than whales, even though raw brain size may look better for whales
Yeah, that’s quite interesting. Raises the question though, why do they not have more neurons? They do have larger glia to neuron ratios, it’s not like everything’s simply bigger. Perhaps aquatic environment simply doesn’t reward intelligence that much.
which takes account of the fact that the brain is used for bodily functions
Well, the bodily functions are the same but occurring at a lower rate, for a larger mammal. Most of whale’s body is fat, anyhow, which doesn’t need to be controlled by brain, and it’s not generally the case that people drop many IQ points when they become overweight. Nor are smaller people with same sized heads more intelligent.
edit: on the other hand, EQ may be a (very crude) measure of how well brain tissue pays off for an animal. If you have high quality brain tissue and you’re in a complex environment, at the equilibrium between costs and benefits you would haul around more brain mass per body mass. With the obvious caveat that this tradeoff is very different between land animals, flying animals, and aquatic animals.
Nor are smaller people with same sized heads more intelligent.
Women are in average approximately as intelligent as men (though it depends on how you weigh visual intelligence vs verbal intelligence, and anyway their variance is smaller) even though they have smaller heads.
But is it because of the smaller body sizes using less brain for the bodily functions? I don’t think so.
edit: I frankly don’t get the point with EQ. If we had to make a computer control for bodily functions (e.g. to grow ethical meat), we could do with a weaker cpu for larger animals because they work slower. It just doesn’t make sense that body size would be using up brain to control it, irrespective of the composition of that body.
The Wikipedia article listing number of neurons in the cerebral cortex shows humans as significantly higher than whales, even though raw brain size may look better for whales. Wikipedia also describes an encephalization quotient which takes account of the fact that the brain is used for bodily functions, and on which whales don’t score as highly as they may seem to from brain size.
Yeah, that’s quite interesting. Raises the question though, why do they not have more neurons? They do have larger glia to neuron ratios, it’s not like everything’s simply bigger. Perhaps aquatic environment simply doesn’t reward intelligence that much.
Well, the bodily functions are the same but occurring at a lower rate, for a larger mammal. Most of whale’s body is fat, anyhow, which doesn’t need to be controlled by brain, and it’s not generally the case that people drop many IQ points when they become overweight. Nor are smaller people with same sized heads more intelligent.
edit: on the other hand, EQ may be a (very crude) measure of how well brain tissue pays off for an animal. If you have high quality brain tissue and you’re in a complex environment, at the equilibrium between costs and benefits you would haul around more brain mass per body mass. With the obvious caveat that this tradeoff is very different between land animals, flying animals, and aquatic animals.
Women are in average approximately as intelligent as men (though it depends on how you weigh visual intelligence vs verbal intelligence, and anyway their variance is smaller) even though they have smaller heads.
But is it because of the smaller body sizes using less brain for the bodily functions? I don’t think so.
edit: I frankly don’t get the point with EQ. If we had to make a computer control for bodily functions (e.g. to grow ethical meat), we could do with a weaker cpu for larger animals because they work slower. It just doesn’t make sense that body size would be using up brain to control it, irrespective of the composition of that body.