Re: Hands and brains

[David@interworld.com (David Levine)]

> >
> > About Dolphins, they are a species that went back to the sea after living on
> > land, they are also air-breathing. So that may explain some of the size of
> > the brain.
> > You said proportionally, but for intelligence only the absolute size is
> > impotant. Besides that, dolphins are almost the same size we are. So if they
> > have big brains, they have to use them somehow otherwise it would be a bad
> > evolutionary design which is unlikely. I really wonder what a "fish" could


I would disagree that only absolute size is important.  I'm
not positive, but I'm assuming elephant brains are quite
larger than human brains.  While social and intelligent
animals, they're certainly not more intelligent than human
beings.  Perhaps the absolute size of a certain section
of the brain?  Like the cerebellum?  I don't know enough
about elephant anatomy to say whether or not one part of
an elephant brain is larger than another part.  Actually,
my instinct tells me that there is some sort of minimum
constant k=c*s, where s is size and c is connectivity (i.e.
number of neural connections per brain cell)... so that
creatures with smaller brains could still be intelligent if
they had a higher density of connections.  Well,
actually, another possibility is that there is simply a minimum
number of connections...

-David