What makes humans special?

These were the first words I sent into a microphone to all of you, nearly four years ago,

and it's a question I now ask myself every day.

I was raised to believe that the human animal is special because it has the biggest brain in the animal kingdom.

But after reading the work of individuals with more brains than me,

I now know this is simply not true.

For what it's worth, the sperm whale holds that title.

A sperm whale's brain takes up as much space as a bowling ball.

And in terms of weight, it is about seven times larger than yours.

So, unless you've got a somewhat big family, you could combine all the brains of everyone in your

household, and the sperm whale's side of the seesaw would still be grounded. In terms of size,

we are all iPhones to the sperm whales supercomputer.

Humans aren't even on the top 10 list of big-brained animals. In fact, there's a plethora of

species out there who beat us on this front. Many whales, dolphins, and elephants have larger brains

than we do. And you might be thinking, well, Macon, those are have larger brains than we do.

And you might be thinking, well, Macon, those are very big animals you just listed.

Pinocchio's nose would look normal on a big enough person.

What matters when we talk about size is ratios.

It's not that humans have the biggest brain, it's that we have the biggest brain for our body size, right?

Wrong. This is also not true.

Tree shrews, ants, small birds, they all have larger brain-to-body size ratios than we do.

Now, upon discovering that we don't have the biggest brains, and that we don't have the biggest brains for our body size,

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