Thursday 22 December 2016

Our Big Brain Is a Darwinian Enigma


Big-brained fish. Image courtesy of Bjoertvedt, Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).



Joel Kontinen

Our big brain is a Darwinian enigma. As evolutionists believe that all creatures have a tiny common ancestor, their problem might be understandable though not logical.

And as they detest the idea of human exceptionalism, they often look at parallels in the animal kingdom.

Yes, they have found a fish that – proportionally, that is – has a very big brain.

Research published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B looks at mormyrids, African electric fishes. They use “weak electric discharges to locate prey and to communicate with one another,” as Science Daily puts it.

One of them, Peters' elephant-nose fish (Gnathonemus petersii), has a rather large brain, which makes up 3 percent of its body size.

Ours is between 2 and 2.5 per cent, but the fish is a lot smaller than we are.

Large brains come with a cost. They need more oxygen and more energy than if they were smaller. This prompts evolutionists to assume that something exceptional has to happen before a creature can “evolve” a big brain:

Here’s their suggestion: “Really big brains can evolve only if constraints on energy intake are lifted.”

It seems that common descent is a creed that leads to sloppy thinking – even with big brains like ours.

The human brain is a wonderful organ.

Its amazingly complex interactions cannot be explained away by Darwinian just so stories.


Source:

Washington University in St. Louis. 2016. Why big brains are rare: Studies of electric fish support the idea that really big brains can evolve only if constraints on energy intake are lifted. Science Daily. (21 December).