What is the most peculiar thing about the human brain?

It’s hard to understand why we need such big brains to accomplish the things we do.

You might claim that we need gigantic brains for language but songbirds with tiny brains have some of the basic elements of language. The brain of a Blackcap Chickadee, for example, weighs less than a gram and has just 157 million neurons.

The mystery becomes even greater when you think about the limitations of our brains. Computer scientists use bits per second to measure the rate at which a computer can handle information. An ordinary USB bus on a laptop computer can handle 30 megabits per second. In contrast, Human beings can understand speech or read text at 45 bits per second or less.

The Roots Picnic 2025 in Philly Was a Completely Preventable Dumpster Fire, and Questlove Responds - The Root

Macaque monkeys, having just 7% as many neurons as we do, are smart enough to use stone tools.

For many other tasks, our brains can only handle around 10 bits per second. That huge brain we have only allows us to keep a handful of items in our working memory at any one time.

My answer is based on an article written by people who are as mystified as I am:

We now told, by Senator Grassley, that on the FBI form about the Biden bribery story, there is a Burisma exec who says he has 17 tapes of his deal with the Biden. 15 of Hunter and 2 of Joe Biden? What would this do to Hunter/Joe Biden if released?

Our brains have 86 billion neurons. Insects manage complicated lives with microscopic brains. Fruit fly brains, for example, have fewer than 200,000 neurons. That’s enough for them to analyze information from their senses, find food and mates, avoid predators, walk, communicate, etc. Fruit flies can navigate in the air, avoiding the many obstacles in their environment and responding to air currents and rain. Human pilots require lots of training to do that.

Our brains are slow

That huge brain we have doesn’t give us strong multitasking abilities. Try listening to someone talk while you are trying to solve math problems. I bet you can’t.

Joaquin Buckley shuts down narrative that Islam Makhachev is a 'big threat' to the top UFC welterweights - Bloody Elbow

Lots of mammals get by with tiny brains. Mice having just 71 million neurons can do all the things they need to do to survive.