Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Published November 7, 2018 17:01 ET (Brief from the Royal Society)
Just as people find different contexts more or less cognitively challenging, different environments can be more or less challenging for animals. Individuals with greater cognitive abilities tend to have bigger brains. Sunfish individuals that live in the complex shallow-water habitat of lakes have eight per cent larger brains than those living in the simpler open-water habitat. This demonstrates that, even within a species, environment can affect brain size in ways that may reflect fish individuals’ smarts.
Lead author: Caleb Axelrod, University of Guelph – caxelrod@uoguelph.ca
