Why aren’t elephants smarter than humans given their much larger brain size?

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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

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Anonymous 0 Comments

I’m gonna use your CPU comparison. Older CPUs were bigger then they are now, but we managed to squeeze more transistors into smaller space and make them more efficient. The part of brain that is essentially the “CPU” in elephants is twice as large, but it packs three times less neurons compared to human “CPU”.

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