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EXCEPTIONAL AS THOUGHT

When it comes to brainpower, humans may not be as exceptional as we like to think as researchers have found that some animals including the world’s smallest monkeys devote a large proportion of their body energy to the brain, just as we do.

Even the ring-tailed lemur and the tiny quarter-pound pygmy marmoset, the world’s smallest monkey, devote as much of their body energy to their brains as humans do, said the study.

“We don’t have a uniquely expensive brain,” said study author Doug Boyer, Assistant Professor at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, US.

“This challenges a major dogma in human evolution studies,” Boyer added.

The study compared the relative brain costs of 22 species. Previous studies calculated the amount of energy needed to fuel a brain based on neuron counts.