Why are elephant and whale brains so large?
Bigger bodies do not need (much) bigger brains, and the dinosaurs are a fine example of this. The real answer is that humans have gone through a lot of really weird evolutionary changes concerning the development of the configuration of our neural networks to include things like a ‘Theory of Other Minds’ module (used to model mental states of other humans for social interactions like lying), and an expansion on said module towards a more general purpose-effect (hypothetical universe/situational modelling for generic problem-solving). I would guess the reason this happened to the primate line and not that of elephants or whales is because our very general-purpose bodies with extremely dextrous complex manipulators (hands) allowed for better use of tools and finer environment manipulation that the others. Improved problem-solving capability yielded significantly greater benefits. Or it could just be the way the evolutionary cookie crumbled. *shrugs* It’s a good question, though, and if a
