Task 5 Evolution

Question 1

Physiological traits

Answer 1

including large body size, metabolic rates and prolonged development
o Larger bodies have more energy which they can devote to the brain development

Question 2

Ecological problem solving

Answer 2

larger brain species have larger home ranges

o Frugivores have larger brains than folivores (fruits are less predictable in their location than leaves)

Question 3

Selection

Answer 3

Cannot account for larger brain size

Question 4

Social brain hypothesis

Answer 4

Individuals living in stable social groups are facing more complex cognitive demand than those who do not
o They have to look and act with others than themselves
o Behavioural flexibility is important

Question 5

Monogamy in ungulates

Answer 5

large relative brain size is associated explicitly with pair bonded monogamy

Question 6

Group size

Answer 6

There is a correlation between group size and brain size

Question 7

Fruits

Answer 7

Population which ate mostly fruits had bigger brain size than those who ate leaves because they are more easy to digest
o Better diets merely provided the fuel for that evolutionary change
o Fruits are more challenging to consume, bc. of place and time of growing, so this might form a need for better brains

Question 8

Allometry

Answer 8

As an organism increases in size, there is no reason to expect the dimensions of its parts, such as limbs or internal organs, to increase in proportion to mass or volume
o Brain size= C(body size)k = C(W)k
o C and K are constants

Question 9

Expensive tissue hypothesis

Answer 9

increases in the brain size of hominins must have been balanced by a reduction in the demands of other organs

Question 10

Physical performance

Answer 10

monkeys can use their feet as good as their hands. Humans can only use their hands properly

Question 11

Social performance

Answer 11

is especially due to the frontal cortex which is larger in primates than in other animals

Question 12

Genes that make humans unique

Answer 12

o the gene (ARHGAP11B) plays a pivotal role in human cognition by ramping up dramatically the number of neurons in the neocortex, a brain region that is central to reasoning, language and sensory perception
 also carried by Neanderthals
o 56 genes that affect stem cells in the brains of primates, about a quarter of which are unique to humans
o Connection between neurons are important next to the simple quantity

Question 13

Meat preparation and consumption (difference to other species)

Answer 13

hard to get but beneficial for brain development

Question 14

Tool use (difference to other species)

Answer 14

is not unique to humans but the diversity of applicability and dependence is

Question 15

Brain size (difference to other species)

Answer 15

the size of the brain is bigger in humans which is not accounted for by their large body size
o Social groups became bigger
o Learning and memory was enhanced too

Question 16

Life history (difference to other species)

Answer 16

o Human babies are born with relative undeveloped brains and after birth there is a strong development that gets less until adolescence
o Menopause is used that females can look after the reproduction of their offspring rather than their own because they might be to old to care for a new baby by themselves
o Humans have a higher reproductive rate

Question 17

The learning niche (difference to other species)

Answer 17

o Humans have a lot of strategies for the same goal e.g. hunting which enquire more complex skills

Question 18

Language (difference to other species)

Answer 18

o It is productive so meaningful untis that can be combined to sentence (provides variety)
o Important for social learning

Question 19

ballistic

Answer 19

Fine motor tuning and planning/calculating actions (e.g. throwing a stone)

Question 20

Intelligence hypothesis

Answer 20

larger brains enable humans to perform all kinds of cognitive operations more efficiently: greater memory, faster learning, faster perceptual processes
o Physical and social skills are always more developed in humans than in other primates

Question 21

Adapted intelligence hypothesis

Answer 21

Cognitive abilities evolve in response to relatively specific environment, so other species can develop “intelligence” for the fitting action

Question 22

Ecological intelligence hypothesis

Answer 22

primate cognition evolved mainly in response to especially challenging demands of foraging for seasonal fruits and resources embedded in substrates

Question 23

Social intelligence hypothesis

Answer 23

Primates cognition evolved because of more complex social life consisting of cooperation and competition

Question 24

Socio-cultural intelligence hypothesis

Answer 24

Humans powerful skill of socio-cultural cognition early in life might serve as predisposition for the complex human cognition in general
o There is an early development stage where physical skills might be same in animals but the socio cultural skills are already adult like

Question 25

Monogamy

Answer 25

o Monogamous animals have larger brain than non-monogamous, in primates it is switched because of they have to keep relationships

Question 26

Dominance hierarchies

Answer 26

emerges when groups are getting larger. Some animals are then able to displace recourses.
o Different ranks are based on factors such as size, or fighting
o Being high in rank benefits reproductive success so it is good to be high ranked

Question 27

Primates

Answer 27

have four fingers that can be used to grasp, binocular vision, brain size is relatively large

Question 28

monkeys

Answer 28

are animals such as baboons, macaques and colobus. They are found in large areas in Asia and Afrika.

Question 29

Apes

Answer 29

Are the larger and tailless monkeys to which humans belong

Question 30

Gibbons

Answer 30

the lesser apes
o 13 species found in southeast Asia
o Brachiation: a mode of locomotion which enables them to swing from branch to branch using their arms ´

Question 31

Orang-utans

Answer 31

lives only in Indonesia
o They are polygamous
o Males are larger than females

Question 32

The gorilla

Answer 32

lives in Africa
o Live on the ground
o Knuckle walking
o Polygnous group structure with one dominant male and multiple females

Question 33

chimpanzees

Answer 33

live in Africa
o Knucklewalk
o Live in an open multiple male and female population

Question 34

Hominins

Answer 34

: Intermediate forms between chimpanzees and humans
o Fossils only found on Africa
o Australopithecines: from 4 to 1 million years ago
 Could walk on 2 feet still spent time in the trees

Question 35

Origin of the genus homo

Answer 35

first primates where brain size moves from chimpanzee pattern to human pattern (2.5 millions years ago)
o Stone tools start to appear
o Two feet walking was now fully developed

Question 36

the archiacs

Answer 36

origin in Africa (0.8 million years ago)
o Proportion of body to brain size is human like
o E.g. Neanderthal

Question 37

Origin of Homo sapiens

Answer 37

o Extinct 30000 years ago in Europe and 50000 years ago in Asia

Question 38

Out of Africa model

Answer 38

AMH were a new kind of humans which replaced the other hominins without interbreeding
 Morphology: AMH from all over the world look relatively like each other and most resemble the early African AMH fossils
 Genetics of living humans:
• There are African and non African species still all living humans can be traced back to a small set of ancestors
• A small ancestral population 150000 years ago for all living humans
 Neanderthal DNA:
• Much more human than ape like
• The divergence of ancestors between humans took place 500000 years ago

Question 39

Bottleneck effect

Answer 39

Some species did not survive the Pleistocene
 Pleistocene: A epoch in which the weather switched between warm, wet and cold (ice age)
 Holocene: the current relatively warm epoch

Question 40

Implicit social contact

Answer 40

To form a group that provides a benefit of cooperation (for example, reducing predation risk), members are necessarily obliged to trade off short-term losses in immediate benefits in the expectation of greater gains in the long term through cooperation.

Question 41

Encephalisation quotient

Answer 41

The departure of brain size from the allometric line

o Better measure for intelligence than total brain size

Question 42

Encephalized

Answer 42

animals that occupy point above the line; has brain larger than expected for animal of its body mass; result of 1) relative growth in brain size (= positive encephalisation +E) OR 2) reduction of body size relative to brain mass (= negative somatization –S)

Question 43

Phylogeny

Answer 43

study of evolution of species and relationships amongst groups of individuals (all species are related because they have a common ancestor)