Title |
The social and cultural roots of whale and dolphin brains
|
---|---|
Published in |
Nature Ecology & Evolution, October 2017
|
DOI | 10.1038/s41559-017-0336-y |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
Kieran C. R. Fox, Michael Muthukrishna, Susanne Shultz |
Abstract |
Encephalization, or brain expansion, underpins humans' sophisticated social cognition, including language, joint attention, shared goals, teaching, consensus decision-making and empathy. These abilities promote and stabilize cooperative social interactions, and have allowed us to create a 'cognitive' or 'cultural' niche and colonize almost every terrestrial ecosystem. Cetaceans (whales and dolphins) also have exceptionally large and anatomically sophisticated brains. Here, by evaluating a comprehensive database of brain size, social structures and cultural behaviours across cetacean species, we ask whether cetacean brains are similarly associated with a marine cultural niche. We show that cetacean encephalization is predicted by both social structure and by a quadratic relationship with group size. Moreover, brain size predicts the breadth of social and cultural behaviours, as well as ecological factors (diversity of prey types and to a lesser extent latitudinal range). The apparent coevolution of brains, social structure and behavioural richness of marine mammals provides a unique and striking parallel to the large brains and hyper-sociality of humans and other primates. Our results suggest that cetacean social cognition might similarly have arisen to provide the capacity to learn and use a diverse set of behavioural strategies in response to the challenges of social living.Cetaceans show a similar increase in brain size as is seen in human evolution. Here, this increase is shown to be linked to an expansion in the social and ecological niche. |
Twitter Demographics
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
United States | 63 | 17% |
United Kingdom | 56 | 15% |
Spain | 14 | 4% |
Japan | 11 | 3% |
Germany | 8 | 2% |
France | 6 | 2% |
Brazil | 5 | 1% |
Switzerland | 5 | 1% |
Italy | 4 | 1% |
Other | 53 | 14% |
Unknown | 144 | 39% |
Demographic breakdown
Type | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Members of the public | 249 | 67% |
Scientists | 102 | 28% |
Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 10 | 3% |
Practitioners (doctors, other healthcare professionals) | 8 | 2% |
Mendeley readers
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Unknown | 247 | 100% |
Demographic breakdown
Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Student > Ph. D. Student | 52 | 21% |
Student > Bachelor | 44 | 18% |
Researcher | 33 | 13% |
Student > Master | 30 | 12% |
Professor | 15 | 6% |
Other | 44 | 18% |
Unknown | 29 | 12% |
Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 100 | 40% |
Environmental Science | 23 | 9% |
Psychology | 19 | 8% |
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 17 | 7% |
Social Sciences | 10 | 4% |
Other | 43 | 17% |
Unknown | 35 | 14% |