How Humans invented Natural Language and why Animals don’t have it

Each species will balanced the use of resources between activities such as feeding, breeding, avoiding predators, and learning how to optimise these resources by using the brain. There are many different evolutionary strategies. For instance some fish lay millions of eggs while humans have small numbers of young and use their brain to maximise the survival of each youngster. However we can be certain that no animal evolves an organ bigger than it needs, and if conditions change an organ will shrink if it is bigger than necessary. This will apply to every organ and function and no species will not evolve a brain bigger than it needs.

The Brains of The Great Apes

Mother Chimp showing infant how to break open nuts

The BBC Iplayer is currently showing a program on the brains of the great apes.The summary says "Chris Packham explores the evolution of the great ape's brain to reveal how different parts have been adapted over time by its anatomy, ingenuity and sociability." In practice it says little about the brain except to say that different aspects, such as the development of the hand, has meant that there has been enlargement of the relevant areas of the brain. However there are some excellent wild like photographs illustrating the advanced features of ape behaviours, and I fouind the discussion about the differences between Bono-boos and Chimpanzees particularly interesting. The section on chimpanzees "teaching" their young to crack open nuts showed, in my opinion, how inefficient the chimp teaching techniques are - as it takes 10 years for the young chimp to develop the skill by simply copying the mother.

Man's Inhumanity fo the Great Apes

I believe our brains have much in common with the great apes - the main difference being that we have a supercharged version. For this reason I was upset to see the latest report on the numbers of great apes that are illegally killed or taken into captivity each year. I am clearly worried that we are likely to end up with them all going extinct or ending up in permanent captivity.