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The modern human brain is 10% smaller than it was 40,000 years ago, with an average capacity of 5.7 cups. Brain size is not an indicator of intelligence, and theories suggest that cooperation led to a collective intelligence that cost us cranial space but gained us civilization. The sperm whale has the largest brain in the animal kingdom.
Studies have consistently shown that brain size is not an indicator of intelligence. In fact, your brain isn’t even as big as it would have been if you were born some 40,000 years ago. According to the research, the modern human brain is about 10 percent smaller than it once was, a change that marks the reversal of cranial expansion that began about 4 million years ago. Back then, our brains contained about 1.5 cups (355 mL) of gray matter. That number began to grow with evolution, and by about 130,000 years ago, our cranial capacity had quadrupled to 6 cups (1.4 L). That’s when things stopped and even reversed, so that the average human brain now holds about 5.7 cups (1.3 l). A number of theories have been floated to explain the change, with perhaps the most interesting being that as we grew up together as a people, we didn’t have to know so much individually. In other words, cooperation created a collective intelligence that cost us cranial space but gained us civilization as we know it.
Does Gray Matter Really Matter?:
The sperm whale has the largest brain in the animal kingdom, weighing an average of 18 pounds (8 kg) and 500 cubic inches (8.193 cubic cm) in size.
The human brain requires 20% of the body’s oxygen and blood.
A leech’s body is divided into 32 segments, each of which is controlled by its own ganglia, the equivalent of having a brain in each segment.
