How Humans Evolved Supersize Brains

There is also this awesome talk by Suzana Herculano-Houzel (mentioned in the article)

http://www.ted.com/talks/suzana_herculano_houzel_what_is_so_...

I am a little disappointed to find no comparison to the dolphin brain in the talk about the number of neurons! Why elephant? If it was about the size it could have been the animal with the largest brain out there (which happens to be a cetacean, like dolphins)!

My wife often observes that I lack a supersize brain.

I like this quote: A few years later, the anthropologist Richard Wrangham built on this idea, arguing that the invention of cooking was crucial to human brain evolution. Soft, cooked foods are much easier to digest than tough raw ones, yielding more calories for less gastrointestinal work.

So along that line, the massive recent increase in high-sugar food/drinks and fast-food restaurants like McDonald's should be fueling another leap in brain size!

Planet of the Apes here we come. We should have a second uplifted species of ape by mid century.