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.

Comments

Re:It Makes Perfect Sense

[Solandri]

I test nearly autistic, so I had to figure out a lot of the complex rules of social interaction, instead of it being "obvious" like I guess it is to most people.

As an example, my sister gave me a birthday present which I didn't really need. I thanked her (learned that rule pretty early), but told her I didn't really need it. She knows about my social handicap, so explained to me that when you receive a gift, you're supposed to politely accept it whether or not you really want it.

Some years later, a friend gave me a gift which I didn't really need. But remembering what my sister said, I thanked her, politely accepted the gift, and tucked it away in the trunk of my car. Where it sat because, well, I didn't really need it. A few months later the friend saw the gift in the trunk of my car and was livid and upset. She bawled about it to a mutual friend, who came and talked with me about it. The mutual friend said I should've just declined the gift if I didn't want it. I explained what my sister had taught me, and she took a deep breath, and said "yes that's true, but not in this situation."

That day I learned that the rule my sister taught me has an exception. If someone gives you a gift because they like you, accepting it is a sign of being open to reciprocating. And if you're not interested in the person, you're supposed to politely decline the gift as a signal that you're not interested. (Though I'm still a bit unclear how you're supposed to know that the gift is a "like" gift when the person doesn't actually say so when they give it to you.)

Social norms are full of these rules, exceptions to the rules, exceptions to exceptions, exceptions to exceptions to exceptions, etc. It takes quite a bit of brainpower to figure all this out subconsciously so that it's "obvious" without having to learn it the way I have to.

And to point out the elephant in the room, there's another behavior which demands social conformity and also has these complex rules and exceptions, thus requiring a bigger brain. Language.