What’s special about the human brain?
Human brain is not bigger than, e.g., the elephant’s brain, but we are smarter than elephants because the proportion of brain/body matters. Chimpanzees and humans have a similar size body and brain. But according to wiki, human beings have 86 billions of neurons and chimps have 28 billions of neurons. Running a brain consumes much energy, chewing raw food entire day cannot supply enough energy for human brain. It is the fire that makes cooking possible so we can more effectively absorb nutrition and keep our brain running.
(Acknowledgment: Neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel, just realized that I used a very close title as her talk’s title, lol)