Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Peer Pressure Forced Whales and Dolphins To Evolve Big Brains Like Humans, Says Study (qz.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the pressures-of-society dept.

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.

66 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Peer review hurts by gwolf · · Score: 1

    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!

  2. However, by the time you get as social as insects by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The size of the brain doesn't seem to matter so much anymore.

    I see some logic vs Lysenkoism at play here..

  3. Dolphins? by mentil · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:Dolphins? by lucm · · Score: 3, Funny

      Did you read the Wikipedia article you posted?

      When markers for different types of cells were analyzed, Einstein's brain was discovered to contain significantly more glia than normal brains in the left angular gyrus, an area thought to be responsible for mathematical processing and language.

      So I guess we're fucked if a dolphin gets access to matlab or excel.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    2. Re:Dolphins? by Hognoxious · · Score: 5, Funny

      I can't use Excel (post 2003). Perhaps the ribbon interface is designed for use with flippers?

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    3. Re:Dolphins? by Solandri · · Score: 3, Funny

      On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dolphin.

    4. Re:Dolphins? by MangoCats · · Score: 1

      Brain size isn't going to be directly correlated with intelligence, whatever intelligence is...

      Evolutionary pressure for intelligence without matching pressure for small brain size may cause the brain to grow, as the quickest route to increased intelligence by chance mutation, but... if there is pressure on brain size and intelligence at the same time, that should eventually lead to brains that are simultaneously smaller and smarter.

      Look at what the brain of a wasp can do... pound for pound, the brains of flying territorial insects with complex hunting and specific parasitic practices would seem to be far more intelligent than anything the mammals have come up with, pound for pound.

    5. Re:Dolphins? by drunken_boxer777 · · Score: 1

      Hmm, if only there were some source of high density energy underwater. Like something that could have precipitated the origins of life on Earth?

    6. Re:Dolphins? by Immerman · · Score: 2

      Insect brains are indeed miracles of scaling and situational reuse.

      Primates have our own interesting mutation on that front: Normally cell size scales with body size - an elephant's cells are far larger than a mouse's, including it's neurons. So brain-to-body size ratio provides a reasonable first-order approximation of intelligence across species.

      Primates though have evolved roughly constant-size neurons, so that large primates have far more neurons than small ones, even when the brain-to-body size ratio is the same. It's only the size of the brain itself that matters for determining potential intelligence. And humans are about as intelligent as one would expect a primate to be based on our brain size.

      Of course that also means that brain-to-body size ratios are utterly useless for comparing intelligence between primates and other species.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    7. Re:Dolphins? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      14 years and you still haven't adapted? Maybe your ancestors didn't receive enough peer pressure.

    8. Re:Dolphins? by Wulf2k · · Score: 1

      It would be harder for them to discover, but there's no reason aquatic life couldn't develop fire at the surface.

      They head up there often enough to breath, they could see a fire happen some time.

    9. Re:Dolphins? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      Hmm, if only there were some source of high density energy underwater.

      Hydrothermal vents are rare, most are much deeper than dolphins can go, and there is no plausible mechanism to use their heat to smelt or forge metal, especially with flippers instead of hands. Octopuses can grip and go deep, but they are not social, and hence would not develop a culture to accumulate knowledge across generations.

    10. Re:Dolphins? by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 2

      I saw a documentary that showed fires, fire engines, crab shacks, highways and even cars, all under water, all operating seemingly normally. They kept interviewing this citizen named Mr Robert Pants, also known as Spongebob.

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    11. Re:Dolphins? by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      Evolutionary pressure for intelligence without matching pressure for small brain size

      Brain tissue is physiologically expensive. There's your pressure for small brain size.

      That it requires glucose to fuel it (instead of the mix of glycogen and fats which muscle cells can absorb in addition to glucose) adds to the physiological stresses produced trying to run a large brain.

      I'm now wondering how large a brain (mammalian) can get before it can't lose heat sufficiently to avoid permanent heat stroke. Elephant sized, obviously - but how much larger?

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  4. It Makes Perfect Sense by careysub · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:It Makes Perfect Sense by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 2

      You're using environmental activist thinking.

      Intelligence is not needed for your species to "survive" if what you mean by that is existing in vast numbers over long periods of time. But show me the cockroaches with the social structure and self-awareness it would take to figure out its place on the planet and in the solar system, learn that a large asteroid is a hundred years away from destroying all life on Earth, and use that time to find out how to deflect it.

      THAT's how I would define survival.

    2. Re:It Makes Perfect Sense by Solandri · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    3. Re:It Makes Perfect Sense by Zeromous · · Score: 1

      >world population dropping to a few thousand individuals, intelligence equivalent to our own did not give them a huge survival advantage at that time.

      This seems like a reach. If there was such an extinction event, high intelligence and social cooperation are an adaptation to environmental pressure. It drastically improves the odds of not only surviving but rebounding to support a large social group quickly, leading to the very apparent intelligence arms race you point out during successful times.

      I don't disagree that success in this case perhaps is a stronger pressure to adapt but only in a large society. Until then the pressure to survive and grow socially faster than others is a major evolutionary advantage.

      --
      ---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
    4. Re:It Makes Perfect Sense by MangoCats · · Score: 1

      Those near extinction events were quite likely selection processes for intelligence. Sure, smart people died due to circumstances, but when the circumstances were bad enough that only the smart people lived...

      Smart people and dumb people have remarkably similar looking brains under post-mortem dissection, fMRI scans, and all kinds of other analyses... how can we possibly infer anything about intelligence from fossilized remains?

    5. Re:It Makes Perfect Sense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      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.)

      I don't think I'm autistic (at least not much, I am on slashdot), and I would never refuse a gift for any reason (unless it were clearly attached to an obligation, in which case that's not a gift anyway). I guess my point is it's not cut and dry. If someone gave me something I didn't need or want, I would at least hide that fact from them haha.

    6. Re:It Makes Perfect Sense by swillden · · Score: 2

      You're using environmental activist thinking.

      I'm not sure what that means. But you're using a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution.

      Intelligence is not needed for your species to "survive" if what you mean by that is existing in vast numbers over long periods of time.

      First, evolution doesn't favor species survival, or individual survival. It favors genetic survival, meaning the survival and replication of a genotype over competing genotypes. In many cases, the best genotype survival adaptations are adaptations that favor the survival or growth of the species, or the individual, but that's a side effect -- and doesn't always happen. Sometimes the adaptation that enables one genotype to out-compete its rivals is actually bad for the species or the individual.

      But show me the cockroaches with the social structure and self-awareness it would take to figure out its place on the planet and in the solar system, learn that a large asteroid is a hundred years away from destroying all life on Earth, and use that time to find out how to deflect it.

      This is very twisted reasoning. The genetic adaptations that led to our large brains were clearly not selecting for ability with astronomy. The most plausible explanation yet presented is that we developed our ability to think about hypotheticals (the core ability that makes science possible) because individuals who could do that were better able to think about the perspectives of their human rivals, and therefore able to outcompete them for mates and resources. That is, we developed big brains not to ensure the survival of our species, but to be better at kicking the shit out of our human opponents (note that that statement actually reverses the true causality, but it's still a useful way to think about it). And we certainly didn't do it in response to evolutionary pressure from planet-sterilizing asteroids.

      THAT's how I would define survival.

      You and Humpty Dumpty.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    7. Re:It Makes Perfect Sense by Locke2005 · · Score: 2

      To put it slightly differently, for social animals, evolution is driven by the survival of tribes or packs, not the survival of individuals. That's why wolf packs do just fine with only the alphas breeding, and why evolution hasn't eliminated homosexuality.

      --
      I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
    8. Re:It Makes Perfect Sense by swillden · · Score: 1

      To put it slightly differently, for social animals, evolution is driven by the survival of tribes or packs, not the survival of individuals. That's why wolf packs do just fine with only the alphas breeding, and why evolution hasn't eliminated homosexuality.

      Not quite. Even in social animals, genes are ultimately "selfish". It's not about individuals or species. But it's definitely the case that in social animals the beneficial (to the genes) adaptations are often related to the ability to cooperate for the good of near-relatives, as well as the good of direct replication.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    9. Re:It Makes Perfect Sense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      This anonymous coward on the Internet would like to offer a few social lessons that might help you.....

      1) Non-autistic people are not automatically social adepts. Each one is full of a unique collection of social failings, and misunderstandings. They will often state rules that directly contradict one another. Sometimes it is because they are living out the relevant details that distinguish the situations, but other times it is because they are too steeped in the emotion of the moment to consider the situation objectively, and their own failings come out.

      2) Your best source of good information about social rules is a professional psychologist, or a therapist who specializes in work with Autistic people.

      3) Someone who gets THAT upset at discovering that a friend didn't really need a gift which was politely accepted may not be all that valuable as a friend. Too much emotional dis-regulation can make a person reckless and even dangerous.

      4) When you politely receive a gift that you don't want or need....if at all possible....make it look as though you got at least some use out of the gift. Open it up and put it in a logical place. Or if it is a consumable, covertly dispose of it and maintain a ready claim of having consumed it, should the issue arise. If it is not a consumable, after some time has passed you can get rid of it or throw it in storage and, should the issue come up, claim that changes in your circumstances naturally guided you to fall out of the habit of using it. So long as the details are plausible they are generally accepted. This point is just an instance of a "white lie," which is deception provided with completely benevolent intent and no harmful consequences. The technique should not be over-used of coursed, and isn't always appropriate, so a cost-to-benefit analysis (as well as a plausibility analysis) is necessary.

    10. Re:It Makes Perfect Sense by WrongMonkey · · Score: 1
      What does it mean for a species to "figure out its place on the planet and in the solar system" and are you so sure that any species has done so?

      Cockroaches have survived asteroid impacts before. Even if they could deflect one, why would they bother? And are you so sure that any species is capable of doing so?

    11. Re:It Makes Perfect Sense by WrongMonkey · · Score: 1

      Your story has nothing to do with being autistic. Everyone makes mistakes by misreading social situations from time to time.

    12. Re:It Makes Perfect Sense by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      Allow me to clarify 'environmental activist thinking' for you: because Greens assign no value to human civilization or indeed intelligence itself, they like to think that the most successful species on Earth, in terms of long-term survival, is something like the cockroach, which in their view is morally equivalent to humanity and deserves fully equal rights.

      What I just demonstrated above is that human intelligence, and with it division of labor, the ability to cooperate on tasks, to store information as a species, and to defer reward - in other words, all that we call civilization - is superior to your favorite insects even for the raw species survival that your ideology supports as being the highest moral standard.

      Thanks, but I will stick to my twisted reasoning.

    13. Re:It Makes Perfect Sense by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      Cockroaches can survive a wide variety of environmental changes because they are simple, stupid, and rugged. But there's a limit to what they can withstand because they have never evolved an ability to understand their place in the universe around them. Humans have, which allows us to envision and eventually protect against, plagues, volcanic upheavals and natural climate changes.

      Of course our power to save ourselves is at any given time limited because we don't understand the whole universe. But precisely because as time goes on we can accumulate more knowledge and develop more technology, our ability to preserve our existence increases. No other species in our corner of the universe can do this.

    14. Re:It Makes Perfect Sense by swillden · · Score: 1

      your ideology supports as being the highest moral standard

      Why are you claiming I hold that bizarre belief?

      FWIW, to the degree I'm interested in environmentalism, it's merely to keep it relatively nice for people to live in. I couldn't care less about cockroaches, except to the degree that they contribute to my quality of life, and I don't really think that they do. I do kind of like having other plants and animals around; many are useful, many are interesting, some are just plain cute. But that's really neither here nor there, because my comment had nothing to do with environmentalism. I was just correcting your misunderstandings of evolutionary theory.

      Do you think that anyone who cares about the correct understanding of evolutionary theory must be a "humans are awful" environmentalist? If so, you should examine your own assumptions.

      Thanks, but I will stick to my twisted reasoning.

      That was bad phrasing on my part. "Twisted" has negative connotations that I didn't mean to imply. What I meant to say was that you were reasoning evolutionary outcomes that couldn't possibly have been related to the supposedly-evolutionary pressures that you were citing. Perhaps "confused thinking" would be more on target.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    15. Re:It Makes Perfect Sense by urusan · · Score: 1

      I'd say your sister's rule should be the default rule, and you should only deviate from it if you're very confident it's an exception, since it's socially much safer to accept a gift than reject it (as you point out, you can't always tell the difference between these scenarios). You should only turn down a gift if you realize there's something attached that you don't want (for instance, they "like" you and want a deeper relationship you're not interested in, they are bribing you, etc.). The best indicator that something is secretly attached is if the value of the gift is way out of proportion to your current relationship and it's gift they specifically got for you (as opposed to something valuable they want to get rid of, like event tickets they can't use). Even if you mess up here, they might get upset when you don't uphold your end of the "deal", but in all seriousness that's not really your fault, as a freely given gift is still a gift. They made the mistake, not you, and nobody is going to think poorly of you for resisting pressure from one individual to do something you never actually agreed to (since if they made you agree to something up front it would be an exchange, not a gift). The issue should work itself out in the long run as long as you don't sway from your position, since they'll eventually give up.

      Also, if you do like the person back and they just gave you a poor gift, you still want to accept the gift instead of turning them down. Turning them down at that juncture is basically telling them you don't like them back. Unless you really don't like/don't want to deal with someone, accidentally sending that signal could be much more catastrophic than accidentally confusing someone by accepting the gift.

      A good general solution is to politely accept the gift and later donate it to charity (or sell it, or throw it out as appropriate). Once you donate it, it's not your problem anymore, and someone else will surely find a use for it (after all, any decent gift should have some value). The gift giver will almost certainly never know (the most likely counter-scenario here is if the gift giver suddenly asks why you aren't using their gift...if someone you're not intimate with does this then their behavior is out of line (I would respond "I don't have it with me right now", since this is technically true and then leave it at that, though if they continue to be pushy about it then tell them it's none of their business); however, if you are intimate it's a good idea to store unwanted gifts in a nice location for at least a few weeks or months before getting rid of them so that if this comes up you can start using their gift for a while before putting it back in storage and maybe eventually eliminating it, and if this comes up frequently you should really consider if the relationship is worth this kind of hassle). One more thing to note here is that if the gift has inseparable personal information, you should just throw it out, preferably shredding/destroying it first. In general though, donating unwanted gifts to charity a simple, all-purpose solution for these situations, with very low risk of real social problems arising from it.

      As an added bonus, it's one less thing in your life. That unwanted gift took up space in your trunk the whole time and spent fuel transporting it around, so it became a minor burden in your life and it would have been better to get rid of it.

      You can also tell people you're trying to be more minimalistic to simplify your life, and most people will be sympathetic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... You might even find you like the lifestyle.

      Writing all this definitely proves your main point. There's an insane number of rules, exceptions, and exceptions to exceptions. Most of us are lucky to have a co-processor that's hard-wired to work through these issues. I feel like mine is faulty sometimes, but I seem to do fine overall.

      The other thing I was thinking of while writing this is that without the

  5. Splain that! by Tablizer · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I have a relatively big brain, but I'm socially clueless.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
    1. Re:Splain that! by EzInKy · · Score: 1

      It's simple, you suffer from narcissistic personality disorder.

      --
      Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
    2. Re:Splain that! by Locke2005 · · Score: 1

      When did Donald Trump get a slashdot account?

      --
      I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
  6. Facebook addicts? by OYAHHH · · Score: 4, Funny

    Could have sworn I saw a humpback whale staring for hours at an IPhone the other day.

    --
    Caution: Contents under pressure
    1. Re:Facebook addicts? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Thats not a very nice way to refer to your mother.

    2. Re:Facebook addicts? by antdude · · Score: 1

      Prove it!!

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  7. size isn't everything by swell · · Score: 2

    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...
    1. Re:size isn't everything by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      the motion of the ocean is what matters

    2. Re:size isn't everything by mentil · · Score: 1

      Evidently the brain stores information as zeroes, pecking holes in the gray matter.

      --
      Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
  8. Re: Well, not *all* whales by Calydor · · Score: 1

    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=-
  9. Re:Human peer pressure shrinks brain by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Funny

    They should like *totally* make a movie of that or something.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  10. They will really save us... by dam.capsule.org · · Score: 1

    So long, and thanks for all the fish!

    --
    What sig ?
  11. Welcome overlords! by LabRatty · · Score: 1

    While in humans it appears to be working in the opposite direction.

    1. Re:Welcome overlords! by Baron_Yam · · Score: 1

      Actually... yes. There has been a small but steady decrease in average brain size in homo sapiens for some time now. (http://discovermagazine.com/2010/sep/25-modern-humans-smart-why-brain-shrinking)

      Either our brains are getting more efficient or they're shedding unnecessary redundancy or functionality. I'd tend to believe the latter since that would be the simpler change in evolutionary terms.

      Keep in mind there's no need to translate the above to the belief we're getting less intelligent. There are probably all sorts of brain functions that were extremely helpful to pre-Stone Age humans that we haven't relied upon for a very long time, so some atrophy isn't all that astonishing. I'm actually rather more interested in why there's a net shrinkage when I'd have expected growing social needs to have caused other parts of the brain to be under selection pressure for expansion.

  12. Re:However, by the time you get as social as insec by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  13. Cause and effect reversed? by misnohmer · · Score: 1

    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?

    1. Re:Cause and effect reversed? by Gilgaron · · Score: 1

      Because of how natural selection works... what you're describing is more like Lamarckism

    2. Re:Cause and effect reversed? by misnohmer · · Score: 1

      I see. By that logic, computer engineering is practiced only by the homo sapiens which has the most evolved brain, therefore we can conclude that computer engineering is the cause homo sapiens brain evolvution?

    3. Re:Cause and effect reversed? by Gilgaron · · Score: 1

      No... perhaps I was too succinct. Being better at complex social interactions conferred selective advantage, which led to positive selection for the traits (larger brains) that allowed for more complex social interactions.

  14. Re:Human peer pressure shrinks brain by Maritz · · Score: 1

    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

    You should have looked into whether brain size means a whole lot, and saved yourself the trouble of typing out this stupid, ignorant, ill-informed post. Thanks anyway, I guess.

    --
    I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
  15. Re:Human peer pressure shrinks brain by Gilgaron · · Score: 1

    TFA indicates that 'winning socially' was the driver for bigger brains. Not being a nerd. If we assume a bell curve distribution there'll always be outliers at the top of the range for complex traits like intelligence, which will even improve group fitness even if individual nerds don't contribute as much to direct reproduction, especially since a smarter parent can mitigate more sources of mortality for their (potentially fewer) children.

  16. If you're friends all grew big brains... by forkfail · · Score: 1

    ... 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.
    1. Re:If you're friends all grew big brains... by Locke2005 · · Score: 1

      If my friends larger brains were helping them get laid, then yes, damn right I would grow a larger brain too! (No, that's not quite how evolution works, but you get the point.)

      --
      I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
  17. Silly ceteceans by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 1

    You don't need large brains to have a good time!

  18. Re:Human peer pressure shrinks brain by Archtech · · Score: 1

    All very true. Probably because evolutionary change is quite slow - or, to put it another way, our individual lifespan is very short. Too short to learn enough.

    If girls prefer big, strong, muscular men with good reflexes, fighting skills - and perhaps some clever repartee thrown in for good measure - it's because those were the qualities a male partner needed for hundreds of thousands of years.

    It's only in the last 10,000 years - and, in most parts of the world, far less time - that cheating, lying, deception and salesmanship have become survival characteristics. In the earlier world of hunter-gatherers, anyone who regularly cheated, lied and deceived would be lucky if the other members of his clan merely shunned him. More likely he would "fall off a cliff" or foolishly eat some old meat, or the wrong kind of mushroom.

    --
    I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
  19. Re:Human peer pressure shrinks brain by Immerman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Indeed, the problem for us nerds/geeks was not that we were intelligent, it was that we chose to apply that intelligence to "interesting things" rather than social maneuvering. I knew plenty of smart kids who were quite popular, I just found their hobbies utterly uninteresting.

    Fortunately, that problem faded greatly upon entering adulthood - there's obviously still a lot of brainy social misfits, but there's far less social advantage to harassing them, and far more potential mates who have grown past their raging hormones to appreciate them.

    I suspect a great deal of the problem is this recent concept of "teenager" artificially imposing an extended "child" status on individuals who are biologically entering the period where they should be establishing their position within the tribe by making genuine contributions. Instead we keep them locked up in day-care institutions with nothing productive to do all day, so that social maneuvering is basically the *only* skill that contributes to social status. Any time you put humans in that situation it tends to bring out the worst in them - be it prison or upper-middle class housewives lunching and back-biting to pass the time.

    --
    --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
  20. Re:Human peer pressure shrinks brain by Archtech · · Score: 1

    cheating, lying, deception and salesmanship

    Sorry about the tautology - written in haste.

    --
    I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
  21. Re:However, by the time you get as social as insec by Immerman · · Score: 2

    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.
  22. Re:Human peer pressure shrinks brain by Gilgaron · · Score: 2

    Sure, you also hear about competitive magnet schools where kids will try to sabotage each other academically. A bunch of teenagers together are going to get competitive as they are forming their identities and they're going to key in on whatever the local culture is glorifying, whether being valedictorian or quarterback is what makes you popular with the dominant social clade.

  23. This fits my theory by Locke2005 · · Score: 1

    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.
  24. Re: Well, not *all* whales by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

    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.

  25. Re:Human peer pressure shrinks brain by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

    If girls prefer big, strong, muscular men with good reflexes, fighting skills - and perhaps some clever repartee thrown in for good measure - it's because those were the qualities a male partner needed for hundreds of thousands of years.

    Obvious solution: When she isn't looking, slip some CRSPR-Cas9 into her drink to modernize her preferences.

  26. Re: Lamarckian evolution? by Atmchicago · · Score: 1

    No, nobody got forced to evolved. Rather, the theory of evolution by natural selection predicts that those cetaceans without large brains were selected against. As a result, the only whales or dolphins who remained (i.e. reproduced) were those with larger brains.

    --

    You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.

  27. study ignorant of whale neural physiology by iggymanz · · Score: 1

    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.

  28. Re:Human peer pressure shrinks brain by mikael · · Score: 1

    Eating sushi can be fatal for dolphins

    https://www.newscientist.com/a...

    --
    Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
  29. Re:However, by the time you get as social as insec by mikael · · Score: 1

    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