Making our brains work requires a lot of energy and humans pay a high price for being so intelligent , since this made us physically weaker compared to other primates, says a new study carried out by a team of researchers from the University of Massey (New Zealand).
Certainly the brain consumes 20% of our energy when we rest , which is more than double what the brains of chimpanzees and other primates consume, for example. In terms of volume, the human average is 1,400 cubic centimeters, that is, three times larger than other primates.
To find out the impact of this volume on our body, the researchers reviewed the energy consumption profiles of five different tissues, three of them located in the brain , in four species of animals, humans, chimpanzees, rhesus monkeys and mice, whose tissues they were removed shortly after death. They used the metabolome as a measure of structures, detecting around 10,000 different metabolites in each type of tissue. The comparison of the data showed that the profiles of the mice, monkeys and chimpanzees were similar , that is, evolution did not significantly alter any of their tissues. However, in the case of humans, the profile of the tissues relative to the brain was drastically altered compared to the others . Specifically, the researchers calculated that human metabolites had evolved four times faster than those of the chimpanzee.
But the research did not stop surprising there. After an experiment of intense resistance exercise with macaques, chimpanzees and humans, which was aimed at testing whether humans are the weakest species if body size is taken into account, the human participants were shown to be only half as strong as the other primates .
According to the researchers, who have published their study in the journal PloS Biology , it is not clear why the differences in metabolites between humans and other primates lead to weaker muscle strength, but the argument that the culprit may be high Our brain’s energy consumption gains momentum. “The human evolution of larger brains and weaker muscles is not a coincidence but a reallocation of energy resources between tissues,” says Philipp Khaitovich, leader of the study.
