Elephants have 3x larger brains than humans. I know that their brain-to-body mass ratio is similar to humans, but shouldn’t the absolute volume matter too? It’s like having 1 CPU vs 3 CPUs, if they are comparable, then the 3 CPUs should outperform the 1. And don’t we have similarly structured brains? How come they are not nearly as smart as us?
In: Biology
There are different regions in the brain, and each region has a specialised function. The “smartness” that we observe in humans is primarily associated with the cerebral cortex, which is the front part of the brain. Elephants have less absolute number of neurons in this region compared to humans. Elephants have heaps of neurons in the cerebellum, which is associated with motor function amongst other things.
So, following from your analogy, the brain is more akin to the whole computer, and the neurons are the components. The elephant brain has many hard drives, while the human brain has many CPUs. I’m not very good with computer components. I hope the analogy makes sense.
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