Could Tyrannosaurus rex have created unique cultures

[Joseph Fossil]

I recently found an extremely interesting paper published in the Journal of Comparative Neurology a few days ago by Professor Suzana Herculano-Houzel of Vanderbilt University about the neuron activity within the brain of the Dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex (Western North America, Maastrichtian Cretaceous 68.0-66.0 million years ago). The study states there is evidence (based on the size of of the Cerebrum section of its brain and the hypothetical amount of neurons (of which for the study M=Millions of Neurons) present in the brain based on its size) Tyrannosaurus rex had between 2,207-3,289M telencephalic neurons in the Cerebrum section of its brain and was capable of problem solving and even forming unique cultures.

 

Herculano‐Houzel, S. (2023). Theropod dinosaurs had primate‐like numbers of telencephalic neurons. Journal of Comparative Neurology. https://doi.org/10.1002/cne.25453

 

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/cne.25453

 

 

Usually I'm a bit skeptical when claims like this are made, but for Tyrannosaurus rex, I'm not surprised the least bit. It's been known for quite a while the brain to body ratio of Tyrannosaurus rex is larger than that of most other dinosaurs at 1.0 kilogram in weight (with only the Raptor dinosaur Troodon likely having a larger brain to body ratio among non-avian Theropod dinosaurs).

 

Brain Image Credit: Ashley Morhardt 

 

https://www.earthtouchnews.com/discoveries/fossils/theres-a-lot-to-learn-about-dinosaur-brains/

 

Larsson, H.C.E. (2001). Endocranial anatomy of Carcharodontosaurus saharicus (Theropoda: Allosauroidea) and its implications for theropod brain evolution. In: Mesozoic vertebrate life, eds Tanke D.H; Carpenter K; Skrepnick M.W. Indiana University Press, 19–33

 

https://anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ar.20983

 

 

 

The recent study A large portion of its brain was devoted to smell, but I can easily see how the size of its brain could accommodate enough neuron activity for problem solving skills and even forming cultures.

 

What do you guys think? What do you think of the study and what would Tyrannosaurus cultures have looked like?

[Troodon]

I like the words of Tom Holtz a Tyrannosaur paleontologist

"What I can say is that I find it hard to justify the speculations based on the data and methods used"

and words by Dr Caspar

"Needless to say, this is mostly guesswork and we have no way to tell whether it is accurate"

 

The twitter threads I would recommend are by TomHoltz and  Dr KR Caspar, the former writing a great thread on several paleo-centric issues, and the latter breaking down the brain/neurology part of it.

 

[Fissiletag]

@Joseph Fossil I am by no means an expert so I could be entirely wrong, but something feels a bit off with this claim. My main reason is how different an animal like T. rex is to primates. I would be interested to see reactions of other paleontologists who work with Tyrannosaurus to the paper. 

[rocket]

I think a T-Rex is something like a big bird (), like most of the other raptors. They had been definitely able for social behaviour, lived in groups, some hunted in groups with strategy, build families and more. I think that we definitely do not know "much" about the dinos or the raptors. They dominated the world for 140 Million years, so they must be able to communicate, interact, organize. When I see birds and read about how they live and about their social interaction I often think that it is possible to compare them with raptors...

Edited January 10, 2023 by rocket

[BirdsAreDinosaurs]

My personal view is that most people vastly underrate animal intelligence, focusing on how they fail to compare to our supposedly superior form of intelligence and overlooking the animal's own unique kind of intelligence. Some birds are very intelligent, like corvids and parrots, and I suspect other birds that are harder to study also must be. Recent insight suggest that even insects like ants and bees, with their tiny brains, are more intelligent then we ever suspected.

 

In addition, bird brains were found to contain about twice the number of brain cells compared to mammal brains of similar sizes. And this is just one of the differences between avian dinosaur and mammal brains

 

So my guess is that the idea that some non-avian dinosaurs had traditions, as in local customs (something we even see in fish), is totally possible and likely.

Edited January 10, 2023 by BirdsAreDinosaurs

[FranzBernhard]

1 hour ago, BirdsAreDinosaurs said:

Recent insight suggest that even insects like ants and bees, with their tiny brains, are more intelligent then we ever suspected.

As individuals or as a community of thousands of individuals, emulating a single, bigger organism?
Franz Bernhard

[BirdsAreDinosaurs]

8 minutes ago, FranzBernhard said:

As individuals or as a community of thousands of individuals, emulating a single, bigger organism?
Franz Bernhard

I meant as individuals. It was always assumed these social insects depend solely on swarm/hive intelligence, but new insights suggest that individual hive members also possess a pretty impressive level of intelligence, given their tiny brains. 

 

Just an example:

 

Ants are not devoid of skills in anticipative behavior. Workers of Myrmica sabuleti Meinert, 1861 (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) by living in colonies maintained in the laboratory can anticipate the time as well as the location of food deliveries [26,27]. This kind of behavior is not unforeseen since workers of this ant possess several cognitive abilities. Among others, they can recognize themselves in a mirror though having probably no self-awareness, solve simple problems (e.g., walking around a barrier), learn to react to novel situations (e.g., pulling on a double door), learn a behavioral sequence, and can acquire serial recognition, but only if rewarded [28,29,30,31,32]. They can present an acquired conditional behavior in a subsequent situation (e.g., having been conditioned at the same time to a cue associated with meat and to another cue associated with sugar water, when deprived of meat, they react to the cue that was previously associated with meat, and when deprived of sugar water, they react to the one that was previously associated with sugar water [33]). They also possess several numerosity abilities. Among the latter, they natively have a left-to-right-oriented number line, can acquire the notion of zero through experiences, can add and subtract numbers of visual or of olfactory cues if seeing the result of the operation during training, can acquire symbolisms including a symbol for zero, and can use learned symbols for adding and subtracting [16,17].

 

From: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7911458/#!po=68.6441

 

[Joseph Fossil]

2 hours ago, BirdsAreDinosaurs said:

My personal view is that most people vastly underrate animal intelligence, focusing on how they fail to compare to our supposedly superior form of intelligence and overlooking the animal's own unique kind of intelligence. Some birds are very intelligent, like corvids and parrots, and I suspect other birds that are harder to study also must be. Recent insight suggest that even insects like ants and bees, with their tiny brains, are more intelligent then we ever suspected.

 

In addition, bird brains were found to contain about twice the number of brain cells than mammal brains of similar sizes. And this is just one of the differences between avian dinosaur and mammal brains

 

So my guess is that the idea that some non-avian dinosaurs had traditions, as in local customs (something we even see in fish), is totally possible and likely.

 

@BirdsAreDinosaurs You hit the nail on the head dude! I will say that the paper does really on a lot of reasonable speculation (the only way we currently know how big T-Rex's brain was are preserved brain cases in fossilized T-Rex skulls - no fossilized T-Rex skulls have been found yet). But the paper makes a hypothesis that can be reasonably defended and highlights how for too long we as Homo sapiens have underestimated the intelligence of the other fauna that lives alongside us!!

[Joseph Fossil]

20 hours ago, Troodon said:

I like the words of Tom Holtz a Tyrannosaur paleontologist

"What I can say is that I find it hard to justify the speculations based on the data and methods used"

and words by Dr Caspar

"Needless to say, this is mostly guesswork and we have no way to tell whether it is accurate"

 

The twitter threads I would recommend are by TomHoltz and  Dr KR Caspar, the former writing a great thread on several paleo-centric issues, and the latter breaking down the brain/neurology part of it.

 

 

@Troodon I will agree that the paper relies largely on speculation based on the neurons of living animals (extremely reasonable speculation but speculation nonetheless). Kai Casper also made some pretty good points in the twitter thread on how the paper could be improved. I will say though it's still a pretty good paper and this is perhaps one of the first tentative steps in studying these incredible animals via their neurons. I also think (if there is chart and figure are correct), the headlines I've been hearing about this paper basically saying "T-Rex as smart as Baboon" should be changed. The headlines should be changed to basically "T-Rex is smarter than Baboons" with a Baboon have 2,875M neurons and T-Rex having 3,289M neurons.

[Troodon]

10 minutes ago, Joseph Fossil said:

 

@Troodon I will agree that the paper relies largely on speculation based on the neurons of living animals (extremely reasonable speculation but speculation nonetheless). Kai Casper also made some pretty good points in the twitter thread on how the paper could be improved. I will say though it's still a pretty good paper and this is perhaps one of the first tentative steps in studying these incredible animals via their neurons. I also think (if there is chart and figure are correct), the headlines I've been hearing about this paper basically saying "T-Rex as smart as Baboon" should be changed. The headlines should be changed to basically "T-Rex is smarter than Baboons" with a Baboon have 2,875M neurons and T-Rex having 3,289M neurons.

 

Anything that is based on speculation is just that speculation.  

[Joseph Fossil]

4 minutes ago, Troodon said:

 

Anything that is based on speculation is just that speculation.  

 

@Troodon Good point. I do agree that more research should be conduct to determine the amount of neurons in the brains of Tyrannosaurus rex and the other non-avian Dinosaurs.