why is it that so many animals have their brains in their head, rather than anywhere else in their body?

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why is it that so many animals have their brains in their head, rather than anywhere else in their body?

In: Biology

12 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Eyes probably evolved before the brain – after all you don’t need much brain power if you can’t see. The brain then evolved alongside eyes to process all that visual information.

The retina is effectively an extension of the brain, they both develop from the same tissue. It would be quite an evolutionary step for the brain to move elsewhere.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Simply, the speed of transmitting information from the senses to the brain and back encourages a central nervous system that is focused on the primary sense gathering organs. Eyes, Ears, Nose.

From there it’s an evolutionary advantage having those in an optimal position to gather data, or a head. Different species have different locations of not only their heads, but also their sense organs. Fish and horses for example have eyes on the sides of their heads, while most mammals have forward facing eyes. That’s a bit of an aside, but it does go to show that their are evolutionary advantages to different configurations.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The head contains the eyes, nose and ears having a short distance to the brain allows the animal to process this information rapidly to run away or chase what they notice.

Anonymous 0 Comments

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Anonymous 0 Comments

What does (almost) every animal have? A butt and a mouth. They’re even the first things you grow as a little blastula. So if you’re going to put sensory organs (ears, eyes, nose, etc.) on that animal then it makes sense to put those near the mouth because you want to sense the things you’re eating.

and as others have explained, it makes sense to have what’s processing those senses be as close to them as possible.

Anonymous 0 Comments

If you want a straight up answer and not something sciencey like most of the people it is evolution their body developed a place for their brain to sit aka skull bc it is one of the hardest bones so yea

Anonymous 0 Comments

Animals evolved from common ancestors that had brains there. Since the brain has lots of extra protection and other evolutionary adaptations around it (like short connections to eyes, ears, mouth, etc), it’s hard to move. So it generally stayed where it was in our very distant (200+ million years ago) ancestors.

Anonymous 0 Comments

A lot of people have made really good points about the brain being closest to the sensory organs, and that’s very true, but it’s also worth mentioning that the vast, vast majority of vertebrates are fairly closely genetically related, and working from the same rough blueprint. Head with all the sensory organs, thinking parts, and eating parts at one end, waste disposal at the other, and some number of appendages for mobility. It’s a working blueprint for creatures with hard internal skeletons, so there hasn’t been a lot of evolutionary push to shuffle the important parts around.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Evolution is ultimately random and that’s just what happened to work for animals that procreated and functioned well.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Although other answers are really good for explaining why central nervous systems that evolved independently are usually in the head, the vertebrate brain probably only evolved once, so it’s the same organ, that initially evolved in the head and just didn’t move.