Hirsch, Ben T., Kays, Roland, Alavi, Shauhin, Caillaud, Damien, Havmoller, Rasmus, Mares, Rafael, and Crofoot, Margaret (2024) Smarter foragers do not forage smarter: a test of the diet hypothesis for brain expansion. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 291 (2023).

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Abstract

A leading hypothesis for the evolution of large brains in humans and other species is that a feedback loop exists whereby intelligent animals forage more efficiently, which results in increased energy intake that fuels the growth and maintenance of large brains. We test this hypothesis for the first time with high-resolution tracking data from four sympatric, frugivorous rainforest mammal species (42 individuals) and drone-based maps of their predominant feeding trees. We found no evidence that larger-brained primates had more efficient foraging paths than smaller brained procyonids. This refutes a key assumption of the fruit-diet hypothesis for brain evolution, suggesting that other factors such as temporal cognition, extractive foraging or sociality have been more important for brain evolution.

Item ID:	85890
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1471-2954
Copyright Information:	© 2024 The Author(s). Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
Date Deposited:	18 Jun 2025 02:56
FoR Codes:	31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3104 Evolutionary biology > 310404 Evolution of developmental systems @ 100%
SEO Codes:	28 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 2801 Expanding knowledge > 280102 Expanding knowledge in the biological sciences @ 100%
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