Brain size is of little consequence

In light of the recent discovery by researchers at International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-H), that Indian brains are smaller than those of Caucasians, it must be remembered that sperm whales and elephants have much bigger brains than all humans and our brain-to-body ratio is the same as mice. However, we score better in the encephalisation quotient, or the ratio of actual brain mass to the predicted one for a species’ size. But the complexity of neural connections or synapses and volume of grey matter is more relevant to intelligence than size. So, a profound observation by Winnie the Pooh bears repetition, “When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking into it.”

In other words, while a big brain should mean more intelligence, research indicates it depends more on how efficiently parts of any brain communicate with each other. Otherwise, Albert Einstein would have been put to shade by sperm whales. So, without pooh-poohing IIIT-H’s discovery, it would be wise to also note what several people with not-small brains have averred over the years: not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.