Once upon a time, about 320 million years ago, there lived a small creature.

It scurried around on four legs, had skin like a reptile, and it laid eggs.

This creature made its home in a humid forest at the edge of a swamp.

Such habitats were common across the vast continent of Pangaea in those days.

Two independent and wildly different animal lineages that exist today, both trace their ancestry

all the way back to this one species that lived 320 million years ago.

One of those lineages is the mammals.

Inside its skull, that ancient ancestral creature had a relatively small reptile-like brain.

But the brain's capacity for deep thoughts, for hopes and dreams, for the ability to do rocket science, in other words, its capacity

for intelligence, increased generation after generation in the lineage of descendants that became

the mammals. Over hundreds of millions of years, mammal brains became more complex and

proportionally larger when compared to their body sizes.

You and I represent the latest model when it comes to smart mammals with oversized brains.

But remember that mammals are just one of two lineages that descended from that ancient reptile-like creature. Birds represent the

other lineage. Over the last 320 million years, this second lineage went on its own wild

evolutionary ride, leading eventually to feathered dinosaurs that could fly and sing beautiful songs.

This was a very different path than the one taken by mammals.

Animals in the bird lineage ended up, of course, with bird brains.

And as we all know, having a bird brain means you aren't very smart.

You're running mostly on instinct.

For example, I read in the news recently that one politician insulted another politician by calling them a bird brain. First of all, rude, but second, you probably know that calling someone a bird brain isn't really an insult,

even if it was meant to be.

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