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Evolution of the brain
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2011) The principles that govern the evolution of brain structure are not well understood.Brain to body size does not scale isometrically (in a linear fashion) but rather allometrically. The brains and bodies of mammals do not scale linearly. Small bodied mammals have relatively large brains compared to their bodies and large mammals (such as whales) have small brains; similar to growth.If brain weight is plotted against body weight for primates, the regression line of the sample points can indicate the brain power of a primate species. Lemurs for example fall below this line which means that for a primate of equivalent size, we would expect a larger brain size. Humans lie well above the line indicating that humans are more encephalized than lemurs. In fact, humans are more encephalized than all other primates.Encephalization quotients (EQs) may indicate how much brain power a species has in comparison with other mammals. Primates lie at the top of this range with humans having the highest EQ score. EQ has a high degree of correlation with the ecological conditions of an animal such as its feeding behaviours and food it consumes. Leaf eating monkeys have lower EQ than frugivorous or omnivorous monkeys since they have to work harder to forage than monkeys which eat abundant, easy to find leaves.
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