Putting more energy into parenting could lead to larger brains

By Alice Clifford via SWNS

Putting more energy into parenting could lead to the development of larger brains and give animals a greater chance of survival, a new study revealed.

Between different species, larger relative brain size is associated with better cognitive abilities that can help with survival, but it comes with higher energy costs.

Warm-blooded animals often have much bigger brains than cold-blooded species.

The research team suggests that these warm-blooded species have bigger brains because parents give more attention and care to their young.

These animals invest their energy in their babies through producing eggs, lactating, providing food, carrying them, or huddling up to them to keep them warm.

Cold-blooded species, however, simply release eggs.

They found that over time, animals who gave more energy to their young evolved to have larger brains.

Thanks to the growth in brain size, this extra care helps improve young offspring’s chances of survival.

Future research could build on this study to shed further light on how larger brains evolved.

Study author Carel van Schaik from the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behaviour in Konstanz, Germany, said “The evolution of extended parental provisioning beyond the egg stage unblocked a major evolutionary constraint on brain size, and therefore unleashed a massive expansion of brain size and cognitive potential among warm-blooded birds and mammals.

“Almost all of them feed their young after birth or hatching and have much larger brains than their cold-blooded relatives.”

The study was published in the journal PLOS Biology.