#FOTD388

Brains over brawn
You have heard it time and time again but is it actually a thing?
Do most people either has an excess of one or the other?
Or can you have both?
Primate species with larger brains have been shown to have reduced muscle mass
There is controversial theory that brains only grew larger because they stole resources from the development of other body tissues
Brains use an estimated 240 kilocalories per day for every kg of brain tissue.
This has lead to the question how have primates including humans found the energy to keep their large brains ticking over.
The theory is from the 1990’s that they make energy saving sacrifices elsewhere one theory was that they have smaller guts but this is unlikely to be the case.
Magdalena Muchlinski at the University of North Texas in Fort Worth and her colleagues explored weather slow twitch muscle, used in long distance running was sacrificed for brain tissue
They dissected the cadavers (dead bodies) of ten primate species that had died of natural causes in captivity
The species ranged from the Philippine tarsier which is about 130g to the crab eating macaque which is several kgs
They did find that primates with larger brain volumes had less muscle mass relative to their overall body mass
They are now looking into chimps, gorillas, orangutans and humans
But based on the muscle mass of other organisms compared to primates it's unlikely that primates sacrificed strength for larger brains
So it would seem that you can have brains as well as brawn
Those people fall into the same category as those people who are incredibly good looking and strikingly intelligent
Link to article - onlinelibrary.w...
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