According to a joint study by Israeli and Italian researchers, the brain volume of some large mammals is related to the extinction probability of the species; The brains of extinct mammals are smaller than those of existing animals that are evolutionarily related to them** A paper on the study was published in the British journal Science report.
Researchers from the school of zoology of Tel Aviv University in Israel and the University of Naples in Italy collected data from the paleontological literature on a total of 50 extinct mammals on various continental plates from 120000 to 500 years ago. The weight of these extinct animals ranged from 11 kg to 11 tons. They also compared 291 living mammals, which weigh between 1.4 kg and 4 tons.
The researchers modeled the cranial cavity volume, weight and other data of these animals according to the statistics of different species. In the comparison of animals with similar body shape and closely related evolution, it was found that the brain of existing animals was 53% larger than that of extinct animals.
The researchers speculate that the size of the brain is related to the size of animals. A larger brain represents higher intelligence, which brings advantages to species evolution and enables them to better adapt to the changing external environment, such as climate change and human hunting.
According to the study, this conclusion can help explain the mass extinction of species in South America and Australia, because the brains of large mammals living on these two continents are relatively small.
Author: Wang Zhuolun, LV Yingxu source: Xinhuanet