Humans are more intelligent than animals. There are staggering differences when it comes to brain development. Genetically, we haven’t changed much over the past million or so years, whereas most of all the cultural advantages were describing only started at most 20,000 years ago. In fact, it was because humans were so adept at survival in a wild state, that we had free time and extra resources to put toward building societies in the first place. The modern human brain is three times larger in volume than those of the great apes, our closest living relatives. More importantly, its ratio to body size is significantly larger and it has a much greater cerebral cortex, the area that controls higher thought processes, with a higher concentration of neurons. Research indicates that what drove the evolutionary expansion of the human brain may well be a specific unit within a protein – called a protein domain – that is far more numerous in humans than other species.’ The protein domain issue is known as DUF1220.Humans have more than 270 copies of DUF1220 encoded in their DNA, far more than other species.
Dolphins are regarded as one of earth’s most intelligent species. The closer a species is to humans, the more copies of DUF1220 show up. Chimpanzees have the next highest number, 125. Gorillas have 99, marmosets 30 and mice just one.