Post by Deleted on Jan 8, 2023 15:25:24 GMT
Just thought I'd write a bit on a new study regarding dinosaur intelligence.
[ We all know that theropod dinosaurs like T-Rex and Spinosaurus were powerful predators with keen senses,
theropods are famous for being the largest terrestrial carnivores in history, some weighing twice as much as
an elephant, but what if theropods were more than just muscle and teeth? What if these terrifying beasts were smart enough to develop cultures? ]
That may have been the case - neuroscientist Susana erkulanovuso may have started a revolution in estimating the intelligence of extinct taxa.
Her paper published January 5th 2023 discusses how her lab utilized isotropic fractionation a technique to quickly and accurately calculate the amount of cells and neurons in a brain in order to create a new system for calculating intelligence. According to her study the old way of estimating a dinosaur's smarts known as EQ or in civilization quotient is unreliable and doesn't reflect how intelligence actually works.
EQ is where you compare the brain mass and body mass of an animal and generate a ratio. If the brain is proportionally larger than what you'd expect from an animal of that size it has a high EQ and is regarded as more cognitively capable, for example previous studies on Tyrannosaurus Rex using EQ gave it a fairly low score from 2 to 2.5, that's comparable to a modern alligator or a crocodile, which while intelligent for a reptile, hardly matches up to complex problem solvers like Ravens or chimps.
However the ways that brain and bodysize develop in reptiles and mammals and birds are very different. She does goes on to explain that there is no universal relationship between body mass and neuron density or even brain mass of neuron density, that is a ratio that has to be determined on a clade by clade or group by group basis, so that's exactly what she did.
She used an isotopic fractionator to calculate how many neurons were in the pallium - the brain region that forms our cortex in mammals and the area that predicts innovative ability in birds, which are the closest living relatives to theropods. This method has actually been used previously to estimate neuron density in extinct mammals. Although as far as I'm aware this study is the first usage of the technique on dinosaurs. So for each plate of animals that she studied she based the methodology off of their closest relatives and known brain volume.
She also didn't limit the study to just theropods or even just dinosaurs. Sauropods, ornithisians and pterosaurs were in there too. She pulled from a database of reptilian neuron density generated by Kevirkova (2022) and used those values for prehistoric taxa based on how closely related they were and what she discovered was insane.There was a very clear difference between non-avian siropsids generally known as reptiles and birds as far as neuron density and brain body mass goes with birds possessing a significant lead, that lead applied to birds that lived before the k-Pg extinction as well and goes all the way back to archeopteryx, indicating that other theropods had it, as a basal trait the other theropods in the study did in fact share that clitistic brain to body mass ratio of birds, which indicated they were an APT analog for neuron density. Sauropods were considerably lower, while ornithisians and pterosaurs depended on the species, but what were the numbers? What does this all mean? Well, aliramis (a relatively small tyrannosaur) would have had just over a billion tonecephalic neurons. That's comparable to a Capuchin, which are widely considered to be the most intelligent New World monkeys. Triceratops fell quite a bit lower at 172 million since it didn't express the same brain to body ratio as birds and likely didn't possess that level of neuron density. Tyrannosaurus with its study breaking brain of 343 grams could have had 3.3 billion neurons in its pallium (scoring higher than all monkeys), which equals high cognitive abilities and social skills. Comparable only to chimps and humans. A couple of ornithicians were fairly high, while sauropods and e.g. pterosaurs struggled comparatively.
So what do we learn from this phenomenal study? Well for one, it's dangerous to rely old and out-dated methods. Dinosaurs were such a diverse group with so many different clades that we can't expect a single ratio to play equally to all of the various species represented by the clade. Two, theropod dinosaurs were actually smart, T-Rex had more neuron pathways than even modern corvids like ravens and crows, which can solve complicated puzzles, engage in play and pass along baboons which also scored lower than T-Rex - have demonstrated the ability to understand and track numbers.
The possibilities of dinosaur intelligence and culture are fast. The author goes as far enough to say that there are more intelligent theropods... and I quote "had the biological capability to use and craft tools and develop a culture like modern birds and primates" I do personally doubt that Tyrannosaurus were out there shoving sticks into termite nests, using rocks to crack open oysters and etc, but that's more of a lifestyle thing than a limitation for intelligence thing.
We should seriously consider this going forward in how we depict dinosaur intelligence in the media. Imagine how pair of T-Rex could set a trap for her to ceratopsies or pass down information on a certain area of forest to their young or recognize individuals and retain complex memories.
[ We all know that theropod dinosaurs like T-Rex and Spinosaurus were powerful predators with keen senses,
theropods are famous for being the largest terrestrial carnivores in history, some weighing twice as much as
an elephant, but what if theropods were more than just muscle and teeth? What if these terrifying beasts were smart enough to develop cultures? ]
That may have been the case - neuroscientist Susana erkulanovuso may have started a revolution in estimating the intelligence of extinct taxa.
Her paper published January 5th 2023 discusses how her lab utilized isotropic fractionation a technique to quickly and accurately calculate the amount of cells and neurons in a brain in order to create a new system for calculating intelligence. According to her study the old way of estimating a dinosaur's smarts known as EQ or in civilization quotient is unreliable and doesn't reflect how intelligence actually works.
EQ is where you compare the brain mass and body mass of an animal and generate a ratio. If the brain is proportionally larger than what you'd expect from an animal of that size it has a high EQ and is regarded as more cognitively capable, for example previous studies on Tyrannosaurus Rex using EQ gave it a fairly low score from 2 to 2.5, that's comparable to a modern alligator or a crocodile, which while intelligent for a reptile, hardly matches up to complex problem solvers like Ravens or chimps.
However the ways that brain and bodysize develop in reptiles and mammals and birds are very different. She does goes on to explain that there is no universal relationship between body mass and neuron density or even brain mass of neuron density, that is a ratio that has to be determined on a clade by clade or group by group basis, so that's exactly what she did.
She used an isotopic fractionator to calculate how many neurons were in the pallium - the brain region that forms our cortex in mammals and the area that predicts innovative ability in birds, which are the closest living relatives to theropods. This method has actually been used previously to estimate neuron density in extinct mammals. Although as far as I'm aware this study is the first usage of the technique on dinosaurs. So for each plate of animals that she studied she based the methodology off of their closest relatives and known brain volume.
She also didn't limit the study to just theropods or even just dinosaurs. Sauropods, ornithisians and pterosaurs were in there too. She pulled from a database of reptilian neuron density generated by Kevirkova (2022) and used those values for prehistoric taxa based on how closely related they were and what she discovered was insane.There was a very clear difference between non-avian siropsids generally known as reptiles and birds as far as neuron density and brain body mass goes with birds possessing a significant lead, that lead applied to birds that lived before the k-Pg extinction as well and goes all the way back to archeopteryx, indicating that other theropods had it, as a basal trait the other theropods in the study did in fact share that clitistic brain to body mass ratio of birds, which indicated they were an APT analog for neuron density. Sauropods were considerably lower, while ornithisians and pterosaurs depended on the species, but what were the numbers? What does this all mean? Well, aliramis (a relatively small tyrannosaur) would have had just over a billion tonecephalic neurons. That's comparable to a Capuchin, which are widely considered to be the most intelligent New World monkeys. Triceratops fell quite a bit lower at 172 million since it didn't express the same brain to body ratio as birds and likely didn't possess that level of neuron density. Tyrannosaurus with its study breaking brain of 343 grams could have had 3.3 billion neurons in its pallium (scoring higher than all monkeys), which equals high cognitive abilities and social skills. Comparable only to chimps and humans. A couple of ornithicians were fairly high, while sauropods and e.g. pterosaurs struggled comparatively.
So what do we learn from this phenomenal study? Well for one, it's dangerous to rely old and out-dated methods. Dinosaurs were such a diverse group with so many different clades that we can't expect a single ratio to play equally to all of the various species represented by the clade. Two, theropod dinosaurs were actually smart, T-Rex had more neuron pathways than even modern corvids like ravens and crows, which can solve complicated puzzles, engage in play and pass along baboons which also scored lower than T-Rex - have demonstrated the ability to understand and track numbers.
The possibilities of dinosaur intelligence and culture are fast. The author goes as far enough to say that there are more intelligent theropods... and I quote "had the biological capability to use and craft tools and develop a culture like modern birds and primates" I do personally doubt that Tyrannosaurus were out there shoving sticks into termite nests, using rocks to crack open oysters and etc, but that's more of a lifestyle thing than a limitation for intelligence thing.
We should seriously consider this going forward in how we depict dinosaur intelligence in the media. Imagine how pair of T-Rex could set a trap for her to ceratopsies or pass down information on a certain area of forest to their young or recognize individuals and retain complex memories.