In a series for the BBC News website, Celebrities and news-makers are grilled by Matthew Stadlen in precisely five minutes. In this video, Matt talks to Caitlin Moran.
Well, talking at that speed, she has summed it up too much. I bet she is talking about the fact that women and men have the same encephalization quotient. Years ago, there were grumpy old men telling “men have larger brains” meaning “you silly bitches!”. I assume this was not only a Spanish thing or trend (I am a Spaniard), but told everywhere. That encephalization quotient...well, I guess it is only a rough gist about intelligence. Since I am not a biologist, most of the things I say, are assumptions. I only saw some graph years ago. That graph shows the encephalization quotient according to size. For example a mole has 0.02 grams for each gram of its entire body. A wolf = 0.004, and an elephant = 0.0006 . So, the smaller is the animal, the bigger the brain IN PROPORTION to the body. Gathering the data they found (about the weights of brains and bodies, of different animals) they did that diagonal line that the graph shows. I suppose it was a cloud of dots, and they translated this cloud into a line. Comparing the ratio (brain weight / body weight) of one species, to the ratio expected for an animal of this size, is the way they calculate that encephalization quotient. Do they do it trying to measure roughly the intelligence? I don't know, I just guess so. And I assume that this calculations only apply, studying an entire spices NOT individuals. Otherwise, Marylin vos Savant would have a head, the size of a watermelon.
