If an elephant’s brain is bigger than ours, why are they not smarter?
Gary Meaney author of Zoology's Greatest Mystery (2022)Nov 2 If an elephant’s brain is bigger than ours, why are they not smarter? This is a good question, because the answer teaches us a lot about the nature of intelligence itself. The average human brain weighs about a kilogram and a half, which is remarkably small really. The sum of all consciousness is housed within that little scoop of nervous tissue. On the other hand, within the cranium of an African bush elephant sits a brain well over twice the size of ours. It’s clear that there’s more to intelligence than just brain size. The baleen whales of the oceans have brains weighing 7 kilograms, well over quadruple the mass of ours. However, their behaviour is much less complex and sophisticated than that of humans, or indeed of elephants. Baleen whales aren’t stupid - their songs are a rich and advanced form of communication, and they’ve been known to display altruism - but their intelligence definitely isn’t proportional to...