Slashdot Mirror
Peer Pressure Forced Whales and Dolphins To Evolve Big Brains Like Humans, Says Study (qz.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: The human brain has evolved and expanded over millennia to accommodate our ever-more-complex needs and those of our societies. This process is known as "encephalization" and has given us the big brain we need to communicate, cooperate, reach consensus, empathize, and socialize. The same is true for cetaceans, like whales and dolphins, it seems. These sea creatures also grew big brains in order to better live in societies, according to a study published on Oct. 16 in Nature Ecology & Evolution. According to Michael Muthukrishna, an economic psychologist at the London School of Economics and co-author of the study, the researchers used two related theories, the Social-Brain Hypothesis and the Cultural-Brain Hypothesis, to make predictions about various relationships between brain size, societal organization, and the breadth of behaviors the cetaceans would display. Then they tested these predictions by creating and evaluating a comprehensive database of cetacean brain size, social structures, and cultural behaviors across species using data from prior studies on 90 types of whales and dolphins.
The study found that cetaceans had complex alliances and communications, played and worked together for mutual benefit, and could even work with other species, like humans. Some also have individual signifiers, sounds that set them apart from others, and can mimic the sounds of others. In addition, it found that brain size predicted the breadth of social and cultural behaviors of these marine creatures (though ecological factors, like prey diversity and latitudinal range, also played a role). The researchers concluded there was a tie between cetacean encephalization, social structure, and group size.
The study found that cetaceans had complex alliances and communications, played and worked together for mutual benefit, and could even work with other species, like humans. Some also have individual signifiers, sounds that set them apart from others, and can mimic the sounds of others. In addition, it found that brain size predicted the breadth of social and cultural behaviors of these marine creatures (though ecological factors, like prey diversity and latitudinal range, also played a role). The researchers concluded there was a tie between cetacean encephalization, social structure, and group size.
I do not know if 'peer pressure amongst the whales and dolphins made their brain larger' is true or not, because, as per my own observation, peer pressure amongst the human kind are actually shrinking our brain size
Nerds and geeks are called 'Nerds' and 'Geeks' because we think differently, and we think a lot
And because of that, the geeks and nerds have been isolated, laughed at, bullied, beaten up, by those brainless jocks
The girls, who are tasked with choosing the father of their offspring, often chose the brainless jocks over the brainy nerds
The more girls get knocked up by brainless jocks, the smaller the brains of average future human would become
Scientifically speaking, our brain size is already smaller than that of our ancestors, and by the rate of shrinkage, 20-thousand years from now, future human brain size might be smaller than that of cockroaches
Man, I *knew* this pressure they put on us to publish on well-ranked peer-reviewed academic journals was bad for health. My head hurts so much, it's going to explode!
The size of the brain doesn't seem to matter so much anymore.
I see some logic vs Lysenkoism at play here..
Isn't it possible that rather than social behavior causes bigger brains, that bigger brains encourage social behavior?
My understanding is that dolphins' large brains are mostly glial cells, which are there to keep their brains warm, rather than actual neurons. That's why their brains are so large yet they're only about as intelligent as dogs. Correlations made with dolphin brain size may not end up being very meaningful.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
It is clear that high intelligence is not necessary for successful survival, there is no general trend toward progressively evolving high intelligence in any lineage on land but the Hominidae (and it stalled among all the branches of the Great Apes but one). Curiously modern humans 80,000 years ago went through a near extinction event, with the world population dropping to a few thousand individuals, intelligence equivalent to our own did not give them a huge survival advantage at that time.
But success in a society creates an intelligence arms race. More powerful brains processing social information give an edge in dominating reproduction opportunity through most of evolutionary history. (Debates about whether perhaps the opposite is true at this moment in history I leave aside.)
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
I have a relatively big brain, but I'm socially clueless.
Table-ized A.I.
Could have sworn I saw a humpback whale staring for hours at an IPhone the other day.
Caution: Contents under pressure
If they keep getting smarter they may become as smart as octopuses. Brain size isn't everything. Until recently, the largest human brain ever measured was that of an idiot. Albert Einstein's brain reportedly weighed slightly below average at 1.23 kg.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Multiple Kara Thraces. It's how she could be both dead on Earth and still alive on Galactica.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
What sig ?
While in humans it appears to be working in the opposite direction.
But insects aren't really social. They form big colonies, but they predominantly act as a large group of individuals acting for the good of the group. There's no concept of social relationships between individuals in an insect colony.
Humans don't do the big picture stuff as well, but we can maintain unique relationships with up to about 150 other humans or animals (Dunbar's number). Whales, dolphins, and also elephants and many primate species seem to do the same.
How do we know the larger brains don't cause the more complex social interactions, rather then the complex social interactions like peer-pressure causing the brain to grow? Correlation doesn't equal causation. I'm no psychologist, but the cause and effect seems reversed here - small brain, no peer pressure to cause the brain to grow in order to create peer-pressure, no?
Could it be that land mammals live in essentially a 2D world while sea mammals live in essentially a 3D world? That's a big difference. Even the best pilots report how easy it is to get disoriented when flying out of the plane (no pun intended).
But insects aren't really social. They form big colonies, but they predominantly act as a large group of individuals acting for the good of the group. There's no concept of social relationships between individuals in an insect colony.
Ants are clones. The concept of individuality does not apply to them. An individual ant is not a individual in the primate/canine/cetacean/etc. sense.
https://www.starbucks.com/
They serve vanilla lattes to marine life. Unless you were trying to make an apostrophe joke? There is no apostrophe in Starbucks, Chris. Just look at your cup.
http://www.apostrophecatastrophes.com/2010/06/starbuck-is-and-walgreen-is.html
So Lamarck was right all along? (I.e., that a creature's needs/desires can influence its evolutionary trajectory?) Seriously?
... would you just go grow and a big brain too?
Honestly, Jonny, I just don't know what to do with you.
- Whale Mom, ages past
Check your premises.
You don't need large brains to have a good time!
Not clones, but all siblings with the same mother. And little if any potential to reproduce - their gene-line is preserved only through their mother and the queens and drones she lays.
Not sure about ants, but I recall that honeybee workers are females capable of reproducing, but due to some rather complex genetics they're actually a lot more closely related to their siblings than their own offspring.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Large brains aren't necessary for survival. Large brains only help with social competition. If your success at breeding is predicated on your success in social competition, then you evolve complex intelligence just to compete. This rule would apply to most highly social animals, so of course cetaceans and primates. What we think of as "status" is just another word for "fitness to breed", that's why humans crave high status so much -- it literally increases their chances of getting laid.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
https://www.starbucks.com/
Wrong Starbuck. The coffee chain was named after the whaler, who exerted evolutionary pressure on cetaceans to grow bigger brains, or at least thicker skulls.
Or called in an alien probe for help. As long as we're talking fiction, here...
That was the last study I read. Lots more fat to insulate the brain from the cold water. (A problem with being a being mammal)
most the brain of whales is devoted to sensory perception, that's been long known and the reason why the intelligence of whales is comparable to certain animals that are not primates.
Insects just follow a set of rules that their genes have programmed with. Everything from communication to building nests. The fun experiments scientists did was to work with solitary bees/wasps when they were building nests. Simply changing the shape of the nest as the critter flew off to get more building materials would put them back into whatever state their programming instructed them to do. If a clay nest was basically an upside down pot, then closing off the bottom would make them start a new stalk and then build a new pot.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads