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Full-Text Articles in Veterinary Anatomy
The Evolutionary History Of Cetacean Brain And Body Size, Stephen H. Montgomery, Jonathan H. Geisler, Michael R. Mcgowen, Charlotte Fox, Lori Marino, John Gatesy
The Evolutionary History Of Cetacean Brain And Body Size, Stephen H. Montgomery, Jonathan H. Geisler, Michael R. Mcgowen, Charlotte Fox, Lori Marino, John Gatesy
Veterinary Science and Medicine Collection
Cetaceans rival primates in brain size relative to body size and include species with the largest brains and biggest bodies to have ever evolved. Cetaceans are remarkably diverse, varying in both phenotypes by several orders of magnitude, with notable differences between the two extant suborders, Mysticeti and Odontoceti.We analyzed the evolutionary history of brain and body mass, and relative brain size measured by the encephalization quotient (EQ), using a data set of extinct and extant taxa to capture temporal variation in the mode and direction of evolution. Our results suggest that cetacean brain and body mass evolved under strong directional …
Cetacean Brains: How Aquatic Are They?, Lori Marino
Cetacean Brains: How Aquatic Are They?, Lori Marino
Anatomy Collection
The adaptation of cetaceans to a fully aquatic lifestyle represents one of the most dramatic transformations in mammalian evolutionary history. Two of the most salient features of modern cetaceans are their fully aquatic lifestyle and their large brains. This review article will offer an overview of comparative neuroanatomical research on aquatic mammals, including analyses of odontocete cetacean, sirenian, pinniped, and fossil archaeocete brains. In particular, the question of whether a relationship exists between being fully aquatic and having a large brain is addressed. It has been hypothesized that the large, well‐developed cetacean brain is a direct product of adaptation to …