Why was the evolution of a large brain important in primate evolution?

Question

Why was the evolution of a large brain important in primate evolution?

Answer 1

It allowed learned behaviours to take the place of thousands of generations of evolution.

Don't have claws? Sharpen a stone.

It's cold in that new environment. Wear another animals furs or light a fire.

The higher intelligence expanded our range of possible foods and territories. Also, pack animals tend to have a lot of brain space given over to understandng social cues, as most primates fare better in a largish group, from predators and rivals.

Answer 2

Evolutionary pressure is the main cause of the emergence of the large brain.

Bipedalism evolved first before the evolution of the large brain. The bipedal Australopithecines were around for around million years.

Evolutionary pressure favored the emergence of larger brains due to several periods of harsh challenges such as climate change, the most recent one was only 70,000 years ago and almost wiped out the ancestors of the human race.

There are many of these climate changes throughout the history of human evolution. From the drying of the jungles in Africa and the emergence of the savannas to the freeze during the Ice Ages. The ones that are not creative enough to adopt new survival tactics are wiped out leaving only the ones with larger brain capacity (ability to come up with new ways of survival). A continuing series of these selective evolutionary pressuring resulted in bigger and bigger brains, with the human race only one step ahead of extinction.

Answer 3

Large brains are necessary in order to obtain more intelligence.  A portion of the brain will be used for muscular control and portions are used for senses.  Primates have very good sense of sight and therefore the part of their brain dealing with vision is very large.  In addition, they need a large brain to remember where the fruit trees are in the territory, and the best strategies for getting them, interacting with their fellow primates and creatures, and avoiding being somebodies meal.

Answer 4

large brain is important in primate evolution because larger brain means wide & faster brain connections... like babies their brains are small but began developing & growing by observing things around them... :O

p/s : thousand years from now... primate maybe evolving into part human & part primate & even communicate in human language... :)