ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2016
The coevolution of innovation and technical intelligence in primates.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Socioecological complexity in primate groups and its cognitive correlates.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Pooled it
- Article
- The flexible, the stereotyped and the in-between: putting together the combinatory tool use origins hypothesis.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Proximate mechanisms underlying the coevolution of diet quality and relative brain size in primates.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Emergence of a novel drinking innovation in an urban population of sulphur-crested cockatoos,Biology letters · 2025Article
- Emergence of a novel drinking innovation in an urban population of sulphur-crested cockatoos,Biology letters · 2025Article
- Palaeognath birds innovate to solve a novel foraging problem.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Palaeognath birds innovate to solve a novel foraging problem.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Palaeognath birds innovate to solve a novel foraging problem.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- A Comparative Perspective on the Cerebello-Cerebral System and Its Link to Cognition.Cerebellum (London, England) · 2023Review
- Explaining the primate extinction crisis: predictors of extinction risk and active threats.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Waterbird solves the string-pull test.Royal Society open science · 2021Article
- Review
- Article
- Runaway brain-culture coevolution as a reason for larger brains: Exploring the "cultural drive" hypothesis by computer modeling.Ecology and evolution · 2020Article
- Behavioural plasticity is associated with reduced extinction risk in birds.Nature ecology & evolution · 2020Article
- Article
- The reach of gene-culture coevolution in animals.Nature communications · 2019Review
- One strategy does not fit all: determinants of urban adaptation in mammals.Ecology letters · 2019Article
- Structural Variability Across the Primate Brain: A Cross-Species Comparison.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In birds and primates, the frequency of behavioural innovation has been shown to covary with absolute and relative brain size, leading to the suggestion that large brains allow animals to innovate, and/or that selection for innovativeness, together with social learning, may have driven brain enlargement. We examined the relationship between primate brain size and both technical (i.e. tool using) and non-technical innovation, deploying a combination of phylogenetically informed regression and exploratory causal graph analyses. Regression analyses revealed that absolute and relative brain size correlated positively with technical innovation, and exhibited consistently weaker, but still positive, relationships with non-technical innovation. These findings mirror similar results in birds. Our exploratory causal graph analyses suggested that technical innovation shares strong direct relationships with brain size, body size, social learning rate and social group size, whereas non-technical innovation did not exhibit a direct relationship with brain size. Nonetheless, non-technical innovation was linked to brain size indirectly via diet and life-history variables. Our findings support 'technical intelligence' hypotheses in linking technical innovation to encephalization in the restricted set of primate lineages where technical innovation has been reported. Our findings also provide support for a broad co-evolving complex of brain, behaviour, life-history, social and dietary variables, providing secondary support for social and ecological intelligence hypotheses. The ability to gain access to difficult-to-extract, but potentially nutrient-rich, resources through tool use may have conferred on some primates adaptive advantages, leading to selection for brain circuitry that underlies technical proficiency.
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