Breast-Feeding Fuels Babies' Big Brains Mum and baby Mandrils
sitting together at the Centre International de Recherches
Médicales. CREDIT: Joanna M Setchell Why some animals, like
humans, have bigger brains than others has long puzzled
scientists. Now a new study adds weight to the idea that such
brainy brawn in mammals is determined by the amount of maternal
investment. The longer the pregnancy and breast-feeding lasts,
the bigger the species' average brain size and the longer they
live, the researchers say. "We were interested in the link
between the mother's energy input into the offspring and the
offspring's development," study researcher Robert Barton, of
Durham University in the United Kingdom, told LiveScience.
Barton's team wanted to determine if longer lives of big-brained
animals were due to increases in intelligence (as one argument
posits), the result of their need to live longer to develop
properly, or both. "That link between brain size and life
history seems to be specifically about the energy