Primate brain size is predicted by diet, indicates new research from New York University. The findings, just reported in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, are a serious blow to the ‘social brain hypothesis’ — the idea that social complexity is the primary driver of primate cognitive complexity, and that social pressures ultimately led to the evolution of the large human brain.
The western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla). Image credit: Max Pixel.
“Are humans and other primates big-brained because of social pressures and the need to think about and track our social relationships, as some have argued? This has come to be the prevailing view, but our findings do not support it — in fact, our research points to other factors, namely diet,” explained co-author Dr. James Higham, an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at New York University (NYU).
“Complex foraging strategies, social structures, and cognitive abilities, are likely to have co-evolved throughout primate evolution,” added lead author Dr. Alex DeCasien, also from NYU’s Department of Anthropology.
“However, if the question is: ‘Which factor, diet or sociality, is more important when it comes to determining the brain size of primate species?’ then our new examination suggests that factor is diet.”
The social brain hypothesis sees social complexity as the primary driver of primate cognitive complexity.
While some studies have shown positive relationships between relative brain size and group size, other studies which examined the effects of different social or mating systems have revealed highly conflicting results, raising questions about the strength of this hypothesis.
In the new study, Dr. Higham, Dr. DeCasien and their colleague Dr. Scott Williams, an assistant professor of anthropology at NYU, examined more than 140 primate species — or more than three times as many as previous studies — and incorporated more recent evolutionary trees, or phylogenies.
The researchers took into account food consumption across the studied species — folivores (leaves), frugivores (fruit), frugivores/folivores, and omnivores (addition of animal protein) — as well as several measures of sociality, such as group size, social system, and mating system.
Their results showed that brain size is predicted by diet rather than by the various measures of sociality — after controlling for body size and phylogeny.
Notably, frugivores and frugivore/folivores exhibit significantly larger brains than folivores and, to a lesser extent, omnivores show significantly larger brains than folivores.
“The results do not reveal an association between brain size and fruit or protein consumption on a within-species level; rather, they are evidence of the cognitive demands required by different species to obtain certain foods,” the authors said.
“Fruit is patchier in space and time in the environment, and the consumption of it often involves extraction from difficult-to-reach-places or protective skins,” Dr. DeCasien added.
“Together, these factors may lead to the need for relatively greater cognitive complexity and flexibility in frugivorous species.”
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Alex R. DeCasien et al. 2017. Primate brain size is predicted by diet but not sociality. Nature Ecology & Evolution 1, article number: 0112; doi: 10.1038/s41559-017-0112
