A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth by Henry Gee

Author:Henry Gee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

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This miniaturization is not unusual; strange things happen to species that become marooned on islands. Smaller animals evolve to be larger, and large animals evolve to be smaller.

The monitor lizards of Flores, cousins of the Komodo dragon, evolved to a size that would have been truly frightening to a modern human, let alone a person of a meter in height, no matter how dauntless. Some of the rats evolved to the size of terriers.31

As a consequence of the frequent rise and fall of the ice age oceans, many islands could boast their own unique species of tiny elephant, and Flores was no exception. Perhaps Homo erectus came to Flores in search of large elephants, and, over the millennia, both hunter and hunted became smaller as each adapted to island life.32

Even accounting for its small size, Homo floresiensis had a very tiny brain. But as the savannah hominins discovered when they became carnivores in Africa long before, brain tissue is notoriously expensive to maintain. In a species challenged by scarcity to the extent that dwarfism might be favored by natural selection, there is even more pressure on brains to do more with less. Smaller brain volume alone need not compromise intelligence: among the birds, crows and parrots are notoriously clever despite having brains no larger than nuts. Homo floresiensis made tools neither more nor less sophisticated than those of Homo erectus.

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