Animal Brains A Favorite Among Early Humans: A Study

Early members of the Homo genus, perhaps Homo erectus, appear to have loved to snack on antelope and wildebeest brain tissue, according to a study published in the online journal PLOS ONE.

As the study’s authors point out, unique among currently-existing primates are modern humans’ regular consumption of “substantial” amounts of vertebrate animal tissues, including meat and organs.

The ability to do so arose over the last several million years as the hominin gastrointestinal tract evolved from a configuration defined by a large intestine adapted for digesting fruits and other plants to a more carnivore-like small-intestine-dominated form capable of extracting complex nutrients from animal remains.

And while such an adaptation may seem incidental, scientists like anthropologist Joseph Ferraro of Baylor University hypothesize that it was this switch that enabled the brain expansion in the genus Homos that ultimately led to the initial hominin dispersal out of Africa.

However, despite being such a potentially crucial moment in evolutionary history, little light has been shed on the timing and nature of the emergence of persistent hominin carnivory.

For this reason, Ferraro, along with a number of colleagues, set about excavating and examining animal remains take from Kenya’s Kanera South site.

In all, the team unveiled several thousand complete and partial animal bones from at least 81 individual animals.

Among the many bones, the team reported a disproportionately large amount of skulls and lower jaws. Furthermore, according to Ferraro, several brain cases and jaws displayed dents and fractures indicative of hammering with stone tools.

The heads’ presence is further curious based on the fact that the early hunters appeared to kill and haul their prey a sizable distance, which would make carrying heads, which are heavy relative to their size, more cumbersome.

For this reason, Ferraro and his colleagues asked, “why acquire, transport, and process an abundance of medium-sized heads?”

The answer, they believe, lies in the heads’ “wealth of fatty, calorie-packed, nutrient rich tissues: rare and valuable food resource in a grassland setting where alternate high-value foodstuffs (fruits, nuts, etc.) are often unavailable.”

Finally, the researchers posit that the hominins would have had little competition for the heads, which were likely inaccessible to all but hyenas and themselves.