>>12449180>>12449289Tools also do this
>>12449257 at a micro level. In fact, tools for hunting, houses, agriculture, cooking, toilets, they're all exactly the same thing more or less, in that they exist to make life easier, so you don't have to spend energy on those activities and instead spend it on thinking and brain development.
Also brain size is only one factor, there's brain organization, metabolic efficiency, metabolic expenditures, and so forth. So dolphins may have a larger encephalization quotient than humans, but their brains aren't as complex, metabolically efficient, and they likely only spend something like 10% of their energy on maintaining it, we spend about 30% on ours.
