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Comment by LeonB | Hacker News Reader

Kiwis also have a larger brain than other birds their size.

The causes and consequences of this are worth investigating.

A lot of animals have an architecture where they can’t carry a large brain, so a slightly larger brain is more of a hindrance than a help.

Bipedal animals can balance a heavier brain on their upright frame. But flying animals can’t afford too much extra weight.

I’m not sure what they do with the extra brain cells, but I suspect that their specially evolved nostrils would benefit from a powerful processing unit.

(Pigs for example have a large brain both in comparison to their body and in comparison to all other animals. I think the extra processing there is largely to support their incredible proboscis. Eg their legendary truffle hunting skills.)

I think our early human ancestor’s big brain was particularly useful for visual processing to assist with bipedal running/hunting.

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Pigs undoubtedly have a better sense of smell than us, but it's unclear if it's really "better" than dogs. Pigs in truffle hunting is a bit of a misconception. Wild boars might be able to find them sometimes, but the best truffle hunters are dogs. In attempts to quantify "sense of smell" pigs ranked lower than mice and way lower than elephants.

So, no, I don't think the large brain is to do with smell. I think it's more to do with them being quite similar to us which is apparent if you ever encountered a pig. What people do to them is horrible and they don't deserve it.

Acknowledging that my own reading of the situation may be flawed, I'd though the situation was that pigs on average are better at sniffing out truffles, but dogs are the better truffle hunters on account of being "good enough" and the fact that dogs, unlike pigs, aren't going to eat half the truffles they find.

No one here seems to have any idea what they are talking about about. 1. You put a ring in the pig nose so it doesn't root and eat the truffles, 2. Dogs have a better sense of smells than pigs by a lot, 3. Big brains don't come from standing upright, whales and dolphins have larger brains, 3. Brain size is important for intelligence, almost always the larger brain the more intelligent, the whole nonsense of body to brain ratio be more important was to make half the human population not feel as bad about having smaller brains. Almost always, more brain == more smart.

Buddy, you have no clue what you're talking about.

That's why I refuse to take blue whales on in chess

> 3. Big brains don't come from standing upright, whales and dolphins have larger brains

That is a terrible "counterexample" to the idea that it's easier to balance a large brain on top of a spinal column than to support it as it sticks out in front of the animal. Whales are aquatic; every part of their body is supported by the water.

Alex: My pig has no nose.

Anna: How does he smell?

Alex: Terrible.

Brain size alone isn't a great indicator of performance. See for instance Neanderthal vs. Sapiens.

Is there any indication Neanderthal were less intellectually capable than H. sapiens?

(I'm only vaguely aware of the field, but nothing I've heard has suggested that credibly.)

No, there isn't such evidence.

My comment was mostly based off DNA left by interbreeding between Neanderthal and Sapiens. Modern humans do carry a small but significant share of DNA inherited from our Neanderthal ancestors [1]. My point was that Genes left by these ancestors were heavily filtered by natural selection for brain-related regions.

That being said, loking it up again now, it seems that more recent publications draw more nuanced conclusions [2]. So maybe my knowledge is out of date, and it's time to pick up the books again :)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_genetics [2]: https://www.johnhawks.net/p/many-people-have-a-little-neande...

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