Marino L
Department of Biology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA.
Brain Behav Evol. 1998;51(4):230-8. doi: 10.1159/000006540.
There have been very few studies of brain size and encephalization in cetaceans and essentially none that have made direct quantitative comparisons of cetaceans and another mammalian group using large normative samples. In the present study two different measures of encephalization were calculated and used to rank and compare 21 odontocete species and 60 anthropoid primate species. Comparisons were made both within and between the two groups. Results show that the encephalization level of Homo sapiens is still extraordinary relative to that of nonhuman species. Nevertheless, a subset of delphinid odontocetes are significantly more highly encephalized than the most highly encephalized anthropoid primates and narrow the gap in encephalization between humans and nonhumans substantially. These findings may have implications for comparative models of the relative importance of brain size versus brain organization for the evolution of intelligence.
关于鲸类动物大脑大小和脑化的研究非常少，基本上没有研究使用大量的标准样本对鲸类动物和其他哺乳动物群体进行直接的定量比较。在本研究中，计算了两种不同的脑化测量方法，并用于对21种齿鲸物种和60种类人猿灵长类物种进行排名和比较。在两组内部和两组之间都进行了比较。结果表明，相对于非人类物种，智人的脑化水平仍然非常突出。然而，一部分海豚科齿鲸的脑化程度明显高于脑化程度最高的类人猿灵长类动物，大大缩小了人类和非人类之间的脑化差距。这些发现可能对大脑大小与大脑组织在智力进化中的相对重要性的比较模型有影响。
