Natures wonders: Social behavior of fish (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, May 28, 2015, 14:44 (3465 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

David quote: primatologists now propose that primates evolved bigger brains because they needed an all-round high level of general intelligence to survive the pressures of living in tight social groups[/b] — for example, to recognize large numbers of individuals and remember their complicated genetic and hierarchical relationships."
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> Tony:Is it just me, or is this a case of a hypothesis being disproven, and instead of being abandoned, it was made so general that it can no longer be disproven.-These Darwinian just-so stories imply teleology without saying it. And they fit the old analogy of making up proposed theories, throwing them against the wall to see what sticks. Did the big brain grow and then folks learned how to use it, or as their hands achieved a form that allowed more complex usefulness, brain plasticity and manual dexterity mutually work together to create brain neuronal complexity?-Very early hunter gatherer groups had a very simple social structure, not the complexity implied by the theory above. Not much more complex then chimps.