Flesh-ingestion encephalization apprehension

[cris...@gmail.com]

According to Cornélio, et al. (2015), "data indicate that cooking is neither sufficient nor necessary to explain hominin brain expansion" (para. 1). There is also a lack of support for the expensive tissue hypothesis. Navarrete et al. (2011) analyzed 100 mammal species (including 23 primates) and did not even observe negative correlations between relative brain sizes and digestive tracts (or any expensive organ) (para 1). "[L]arge primate encephalization was reached millions of years before widespread control of fire" (Cornélio, et al, 2015, para. 6). Although recent estimates of the amounts of neurons comprising the human brain average 86.1 +/- 8.1 billion (Azevedo, etc al, 2009), "homo sapiens weighing 70 kg could easily maintain 100 billion neurons through 5 h foraging with an efficiency of 500 kcal/h" (para. 23). The extended neotony, efficient locomotion and foraging capacities remain plausible hypotheses for allocating sufficient brain development resources for human encephalization (Cornélio , 2015; Navarrete et al., 2011).

References:

Azevedo, F. A., Carvalho, L. R., Grinberg, L. T., Farfel, J. M., Ferretti, R. E., Leite, R. E., ... & Herculano‐Houzel, S. (2009). Equal numbers of neuronal and nonneuronal cells make the human brain an isometrically scaled‐up primate brain. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 513(5), 532-541. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cne.21974/full

Cornélio, A. M., de Bittencourt-Navarrete, R. E., de Bittencourt Brum, R., Queiroz, C. M., & Costa, M. R. (2016). Human brain expansion during evolution is independent of fire control and cooking. Frontiers in neuroscience, 10. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4842772/

Navarrete, A., van Schaik, C. P., & Isler, K. (2011). Energetics and the evolution of human brain size. Nature, 480(7375), 91-93. Retrieved from http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v480/n7375/abs/nature10629.html

[Adalberto]