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Clearly the energetic cost of having large brains was worth it for humans from an evolutionary perspective, or else we wouldn't have them. But 20% of your energ
by toasterlovin 2y ago
Clearly the energetic cost of having large brains was worth it for humans from an evolutionary perspective, or else we wouldn't have them. But 20% of your energy budget is still a very large cost, so if there's a way to accomplish the same brain stuff for, say, half the cost, you would expect that to be very strongly selected for (caloric scarcity being the norm throughout human evolutionary history).
- toasterlovin 2y agoI should say: this would be for pure efficiency optimizations absent any other tradeoffs. What I think you should see in birds based on their more extreme body mass constraints vs ground dwellers is different tradeoffs being worthwhile. Like, if there were an adaptation that required slightly more energy, but resulted in a brain that was much lighter; or doing various mental processes 20% less effectively for 50% less brain mass.