Dim-witted dope or brawn brawn? Debate over T. Rex’s the smarts continue, with the latest paper leaning towards the original idea that these fearsome giants weren’t that bright.
A controversial 2023 study suggested one of the world’s most infamous dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus Rexit may be as clever as modern monkeys, causing serious doubts to some researchers who have given birth to their receipts on the table.
“That’s possible T. rex “It may have been as intelligent as a chimpanzee. It’s fascinating and terrifying, with the potential to reshape our view of the past,” University of Southampton biologist Darren Naish explained when the new results were published in April.
“But our research shows that all the data we have contradicts this idea.”
Led by zoologist Kai Caspar from Heinrich Heine University in Germanyresearchers found that brain size estimates in a 2023 study were wrong, overestimated by the number of neurons prehistoric reptiles could fit in their noggin, mostly the forebrain.
This overestimation was due to the assumptions of the original paper T. rex’s the brain filled most of the endocranial space, which is not true in most dinosaurs, Naish explained in a blog post.
The relationship between brain and body mass in terrestrial vertebrates. Dinosaurs love T. rex they had brain and body size ratios similar to those of living reptiles. (Gutierrez-Ibanez)
Furthermore, Caspar and his colleagues argue that neuron statistics do not reliably track intelligence. Take birds for example – for a long time it was thought that their small heads meant they had few senses and therefore were not very intelligent.
But we have since learned that birds such as crows can outperform monkeys in certain mental tasks despite their small heads, leading to the conclusion that factors other than brain size, such as communication patterns, play a major role in determining intelligence.
“We argue that it is not good practice to predict intelligence in extinct animals when neuron counts reconstructed by endocasts are all we have to go on,” said Casper.
Instead, multiple lines of evidence, from anatomy to behavioral clues and more comparisons with modern animals are needed to make more accurate estimates of prehistoric intelligence.
“A more advanced understanding of the relationship between neuron populations and other biological processes, especially cognitive function, in living animals is needed,” before more accurate predictions can be made, the team wrote in their paper.
The relationship between the groups of reptiles and the representation of the complexity of their brains, showing the tyrannosaurid brain is not very different from that of the crocodylomorphs. (Caspar et al., Anatomical record2024).
So where does that leave you T. rex?
Recent behavioral clues suggest that the infamous prehistoric reptiles may have been surprisingly social, hunting in packs, but that’s not enough to suggest ape-level intelligence.
“They were like giant, intelligent crocodiles, and that’s fascinating,” Naish said.
This study was published in Anatomical record.
An earlier version of this article was published in May 2024.
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