Does Fruit Really Fuel Brain Growth? New Study Challenges Old Ideas

Why do primates possess large brains? To investigate this, researchers in the Panamanian rainforest conducted experiments comparing the foraging intelligence of primates with larger brains to mammals with smaller brains.

Primates, such as humans, possess larger brains than most other mammals. For years, researchers have explored the possibility that diet, particularly fruit consumption, might explain why primates developed such large brains. A team from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the Smithsonian Institute of Tropical Research recently put this hypothesis to the test for the first time and discovered that the fruit-diet theory might be out of juice.

The researchers used drone imaging, GPS tracking, and fine-scale behavioral analyses to test how four species of fruit-eating mammals solved the same natural foraging puzzle in a Panamanian rainforest.

They found that the larger-brained primate species did not solve the fruit-finding puzzle more efficiently than smaller-brained mammals. The study, published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, upends the traditional view that a large brain is needed to make smart decisions when finding food.