"If you can figure out how many neurons go into a bird brain of a certain size, and you can figure out what size was the brain of different bird-like dinosaurs," Herculano-Houzel explained, "then you can do the math and estimate how many neurons a dinosaur brain had." Without any theropod brains lying around - soft tissues like gray matter are rarely fossilized - determining an accurate neuron count of an extinct animal relies on the brains of its modern descendants: birds. Suzana Herculano-Houzel January 5, 2023 Reality was actually MORE terrifying than the movies! /6HafJVHQlk rex had baboon-like numbers of brain neurons, which means it had what it takes to build tools, solve problems, and live up to 40 years, enough to build a culture! Paper is just out in J Comp Neurol.
The ability to use tools is even on the table - though with their infamously stubby arms, that seems less likely. That's enough time and smarts to potentially be a social creature with its own culture, like primates and whales, and also suggests they may have worked together, too.
It also might have lived longer, up to 40 years, Herculano-Houzel estimates. With that many neurons, a T-Rex wouldn't have just possessed uncanny cognition. In fact, compared to the intelligence of their peers, the T-Rex and other theropods - three clawed, bipedal dinosaurs - may have been the "primates of their time," said neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel, author of the study published in the Journal of Comparative Neurology, in a video about her research.Īccording to her findings, theropods had as many neurons in their brains as monkeys do today, with the T-Rex boasting "baboon-like" numbers of up to 3 billion neurons. That's a pretty scary level of intelligence for a killing machine the size of a house. But according to a new study, we may have been underestimating how intelligent these towering tyrants were this whole time. The tyrannosaurus rex was the apex of all apex predators in its heyday over 65 million years ago, known more in pop culture for its ferocity than its smarts.
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