Slashdot Mirror
Hobbits' Brains Shrank Due To Remote Home
Hugh Pickens writes "The 'hobbits,' dubbed homo floresiensis, caused a worldwide sensation when they were discovered five years ago, when some scientists claimed that the 18,000-year-old human-like fossils found on the Indonesian island of Flores represented an entirely new species. Now researchers at the Natural History Museum in London believe that the creatures' small brains could have developed to reduce the creatures' energy needs, crucial for surviving in an isolated area with limited resources. 'It could be that H. floresiensis' skull is that of a Homo erectus that has become dwarfed from living on an island, rather than being an abnormal individual or separately-evolved species, as has been suggested,' says palaeontologist Eleanor Weston. 'Looking at pygmy hippos in Madagascar, which possess exceptionally small brains for their size, suggests that the same could be true for H. floresiensis, and the result of being isolated on the island.' Although the phenomenon of dwarfism on islands is well recognized in large mammals, an accompanying reduction in brain size has never been clearly demonstrated before."
If you think about it, most animals are intellectually inferior to human retards. But they seem to get by in the wild just fine.
So assuming that there was a whole society of retarded human-like creatures living on an island in Indonesia, it wouldn't be much different than a band of monkeys or gorillas living in Africa.
Incidentally, I agree with BadAnalogyGuy up there; with no competition and limited resources you would expect expensive brains to be evolved out. Cats, for instance, conserve resources in part compared to dogs because they have brains with some of the "higher level" functions reduced. However, I didn't mod him up because I strongly object to the term "retards". It's unpleasant, and insulting to people with lower IQs or learning difficulties. It would be far more accurate to point out that many children could survive in a predator-free hunter-gatherer environment from the age of about 8 on, so that possibly sets a bar.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
But she can see Russia from her island.
Table-ized A.I.