By Rossella Lorenzi
Dolphins and humans share a similar brain size, according to the first map of cetacean brain evolution over the past 47 million years.
Experts have long known that toothed whales boast exceptionally large brains. Some species, including the famously bright dolphins, have capabilities previously only ascribed to humans and, to some extent, other great apes.
For instance, dolphins can recognize themselves in mirrors and understand symbol-based communication systems and abstract concepts.
Such intelligence is probably due their big brains, but the evolution of such brains has remained a mystery.
To investigate this question, Lori Marino, from Emory University in Atlanta, and colleagues carried out the largest fossil study ever done on animals, searching museum collections for four years.
Source: http://news.discovery.com/animals/dolphin-human-brain-size-041110.html
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