Food for Thought

The word "primate" means "of the first order" and the group of mammals is so-named because, even in the days before evolutionary theory, it was recognised that this is the group that includes our own species. I've previously discussed how primates are distinguished from other mammals, and one of our identifying features is that we tend to have larger brains in proportion to our bodies. (Not uniquely so, of course, given the existence of dolphins and their kin, but certainly well above the average).

But why? What is it about the primate lifestyle that, over the last 60 million years or more, has resulted in them growing larger brains than other, similarly sized, mammals? This is obviously a significant question, since it relates to what is undeniably the key defining feature of our own species and might explain why our planet is inhabited by sapient urbanised monkeys rather than, say, sapient city-building cats. 

How Dolphins Got Their Large Brains

As a rule, larger animals tend to have larger brains, just as they have larger hearts, livers, and other internal organs. But the relationship is not a linear one, partly because, unlike the liver, there's a minimum size below which the brain doesn't have room for the basic housekeeping functions that keep the body ticking over, so that small animals have proportionately larger brains than large ones. If we want to know whether a particular creature has a larger, or smaller, brain than we'd expect then, as I've described before, we use a mathematical formula called the encephalisation quotient to determine what the size of the brain "should be". 

By definition, an average mammal should have an EQ of 1. The formula breaks if we try to apply it to non-mammalian animals, such as birds, probably because their brain architecture is different from ours at quite a fundamental level. Even for mammals, there is some debate as to exactly what formula we should be using; most older studies have determined that brain size typically rises as the 2/3 power of body size (that is, as the cube root of the square) but a 2019 study argued that it's perhaps more accurate to base it on the 3/4 power and this seems to be a growing consensus.

Brains of the Monster-Teeth

Dissopsalis, another member 
of the "monster-tooth" family

Among the distinguishing features of mammals, as compared with other vertebrates are the larger relative size and greater structural complexity of the brain. It's worth pointing out at the outset that many birds are as capable as mammals of complex behaviour despite not possessing the brain structures we'd otherwise associate with such things so that we can't solely use brain anatomy as a proxy for things like 'intelligence'. But, if we're looking only at mammals, brain anatomy can tell us quite a bit and it's probably fair to say that it does distinguish us from, say, reptiles.