Big Brains Mean Longer Life

Brains are good for more than acing exams. Turns out, nerdy nogginsalso help primates like us live longer, anthropologists say.
By comparing Brain Sizes and other developmental features of 28 primate species, Barrickman and her colleagues found primates with larger brains take longer to reach sexual maturity.

The researchers focused on primates living in the wild, because captive species tend to grow up faster, a phenomenon that would skew results. For humans, the team studied the Ache, a tropical forest culture in eastern Paraguay.

This time-consuming bulking of the brain better be worth it: "In order to pay off all that time you spent growing up," Barrickman said, "either you live a long time and have lots of kids over that life span, or you reproduce really fast. Either way you're getting a lot of offspring."

The analyses showed big Brain Size is linked with longevity rather than reproductive rate