Parenting and Brain Size

Bill Damon, via Flickr.

To answer why larger brains evolved in some animals and not others, scientists looked at how different factors affect relative brain size across 1,176 bird species. They found that the amount of energy parents invested in their young played a key role in the development and evolution of larger brains among birds. The evolution of long-term parental care could also explain how the human brain grew so large.

Read the whole article at the Science Journal for Kids: What do parenting and brain size have to do with each other?