Scientists re-evaluating relative brain size and mammalian intelligence

Re:Scientists re-evaluating relative brain size and mammalia... by bitwize on Friday April 30, 2021 @02:01AM (#26990245)

If your brain were 75 percent of your mass but only contained 1000 neurons, then you would probably be the smartest sort of whatever tiny, simple organism you happen to be.

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Re:Scientists re-evaluating relative brain size and mammalia... by garbagetime on Friday April 30, 2021 @02:03AM (#26990264)

Maybe. I feel like there are probably a lot of uses for neurons which don't have that much to do with cleverness

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Re:Scientists re-evaluating relative brain size and mammalia... by bloak on Friday April 30, 2021 @04:11AM (#26990924)

That sounds plausible to me. I don't have a definition of "cleverness"/"intelligence", but I could believe that in many species most of the neurons are working on processing sensory data or controlling muscles, which isn't the essence of (human) intelligence: you do call a juggler "clever", but a human who is blind and mostly paralysed isn't less "intelligent".

I think it has been suggested that the "intelligence" of octopuses might be a side-effect of the huge amount of data processing that is required to control a body without a skeleton.

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