An animal trade-off: protection or smarts
Print Edition
BIOLOGISTS assessing the natural world sometimes sound like hard-nosed executives weighing the costs and benefits of an investment opportunity.
Species, they reason, can’t be endowed with every possible trait. Instead, they get the ones that help them to survive and hand on their genes, even if this comes at a cost.
Two studies published yesterday by Britain’s Royal Society shed light on these intriguing natural trade-offs.
Examining 647 types of mammals, Theodore Stankowich and Ashly Romero from California State University Long Beach discovered that species boasting impressive protective gear were also not the brightest of beasts.
Pangolins, porcupines and hedgehogs, to name a few, can pretty much go about their business without worrying if they will wind up as some carnivore’s midnight snack.
But there is a price to be paid for all that defense.
“Their bearers may accrue extensive production and maintenance costs,” Stankowich and Romero write, sounding like industrial analysts. “Defended species become less intelligent.”
Other mammals covered by no more than an insulating coat of fur cannot afford to be as carefree. They are far better at detecting potential threats and escaping. Most critically, they also evolved bigger brains.
In the other study, Jenelie Dowling of the University of Montana and Michael Webster of Cornell University uncovered a surprising example of how sexual selection — the other engine of evolutionary change — shapes strategies within a single species.
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