The adult sperm whale brain is 8,000 cubic centimeters. Size matters, but it's not everything The largest brain on earth belongs to the sperm whale, the same species as the main character in Melville's yarn. What they find is helping separate fact from fiction. We're closer to answering such questions now, for a couple of recent papers address them squarely. Just how smart are whales? Why do they have such big brains? Bigger is not always better maybe the inflated whale brain is not very sophisticated on a cellular level. Whales, not people, have the biggest brains of any animal on earth. The fact is, people do not have the largest brains on the planet, either in absolute size or in proportion to body size. Yet the biological facts don't quite square with Homo sapiens' arrogance. We never seem to tire of bragging about how our supreme intelligence empowers us to lord over all other animals on the planet.

We humans pride ourselves on our big brains. 'From Hell's heart I stab at thee!' Gulp. Moby clipped off one of the captain's legs and then, years later, in a brilliant move of cetacean jujitsu, drowned poor Ahab by towing him into the abyss by the harpoon rope tangled around Ahab's remaining leg. 'Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.' Herman Melville.Ĭall me Ishmael for making conjectures unflattering to humankind, but could Moby Dick have been smarter than captain Ahab? Melville certainly seemed to think so. Does that mean they're smarter?įigure from ' Cetaceans Have Complex Brains for Complex Cognition,' Marino et alia, PLOS Biology Of Whales and Men

Cetacean brains, such as those of dolphins (left) and humpback whales (right), have even more cortical convolutions and surface area than human brains do.

How many neurons in human brain