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undiscovered_tumor t1_j23k89m wrote

Reply to comment by eleanor48 in Does an animal’s size dictate its ability to have complex emotions? by Throwaway2354o

So we think emotion and intelligence are linked and that neither are necessarily controlled by brain size, but surely it helps, right?do we think generally bigger animals are smarter than smaller animals? Are ants maybe geniuses?

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Uncynical_Diogenes t1_j23uccr wrote

Neurons are tiny. The capacity for intelligence seems to be linked much more with how they are connected than how large the resulting structure is.

We would only expect to see intelligence evolve in an organism to the degree that it improves their fitness. Intelligence is not a universally good trait; it is expensive to maintain.

Koalas are drop dead stupid because they’ve gotten themselves stuck in a valley on the fitness surface, not benefitting from intelligence. Ants don’t need to be individual geniuses, because the colony’s intelligence is an emergent property arising from many much less complicated little nodes.

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SirCampYourLane t1_j25819o wrote

If we consider the hive an organism, we could consider each ant a neuron, and thus the high intelligence of the hive.

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Telltwotreesthree t1_j255w7n wrote

It's correlated, but it's not a function (intelligence vs size)

Obviously more connections is possible with more cells but as was said earlier in the thread, crows are much much more intelligent than a massive creature like OPs mom

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