Talk:List of animals by number of neurons

Sorting does not work correctly
clicking the heading of the column for sorting by number of neuron seems to sort alphabetically not numerically. Glover (talk) 00:15, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

This is likely because of the mixture of standard and scientific notation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.97.129.100 (talk) 19:24, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

new page
I tried the best I could, borrowing layouts from this page, if anyone thinks that they can rearrange the page, then please go ahed. Paskari 14:48, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

How to save this page
Turn it into an article discussing the significance the number of neurons (citing reliable sources, of course). Given that there are an estimated 1.5 million described species, this list can never come anywhere near completeness, and without discussion of the significance of the number of neurons for a given species, it will never be more than an indiscriminate collection of information. -- Donald Albury 00:59, 7 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I disagree that this page is an ''indiscrimated collection of information' for it fails to be considered any of the following:


 * FAQ's
 * Travel Guides
 * Memorials
 * Instruction Manuals
 * Internet guides
 * Textbooks and annotated texts
 * Plot summaries

I will update it and discuss the number of neurons. I personally believe that the problem with wikipedia is that there is not enough detailed evidence. If you go to the animal page, it does a very good job of discussing the basics (similar characteristics amongst different animals, root of the name, reproduction, history), but fails to provide information which people, like myself, require: general behavior, pages for specific animals, specific strengths, specific strengths... I also disagree that this site should be closed down simply because there are 1.5 million types of animals
 * 1) the number is not that big when you group similar animals together (canines, felines...)
 * 2) should we also close down the insect page by this reasoning?

I will take your advice and try to update this page Paskari 10:36, 7 December 2006 (UTC)


 * The page insect doesn't try to list them all - that's why there is no page list of insects or list of animals. What are the requirements for an animal to be on this page? Richard001 07:12, 28 July 2007 (UTC)


 * That it has a brain/neurons? =oP I like this page, and I find it very interesting. What I would really like to know is the neuron content of a Sperm Whale's brain, as it has the largest of all animal brains (9kg/20lbs). Although not the largest relative to its body size, which might be another interesting cross-reference, with both contributing to an article on how they relate to animal intelligence. -- 123.226.95.231 (talk) 09:42, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-03/uom-aft032108.php mentions 250k neurons for the fruit fly. --Rainer Wasserfuhr (talk) 13:56, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

notes/comments
I think any comments on the numbers of neurons (for example, "varies by species") should be in the number column, not the picture column. Paskari (talk) 12:38, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

In the French version, I have chosen to include the hydra for the fourth animal species. The quoted source mentions that the study focused on the hydra which is not considered a jellyfish. Regards. Stefanos Stefanos 18:14, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Google searches return 86-120 billion neurons and 1,000 trillion synapses in the human brain - maybe some means of differentiating results (vs what is shown in the tables) is needed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by DarkSky7 (talk • contribs) 22:50, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Data
The numbers here are very approximative. A cat's cerebral cortex already contains 300'000'000 neurons, so the figure is even higher for the whole nervous system. See [Evolution of the brain and intelligence http://www.subjectpool.com/ed_teach/y3project/Roth2005_TICS_brain_size_and_intelligence.pdf] for scientific data on the matter.

Beside, numeric fields in a sortable table should be entered withe ex:  instead of 10,000. So that they get sorted correctly.

knd (talk) 14:27, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Added an "embryonic" label to the zebrafish line; the 10,000 number seems much too low for an adult vertebrate. There is a huge zebrafish neurology literature but I wasn't able to find a simple number for the cortex neuronal count; perhaps a specialist could help. -Anonymous, 6 March 2009 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 171.69.45.148 (talk) 20:12, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

According to reference [2], whales and elephants have on the order of 10 billion neurons, not 200 billion as listed in the table. Nasorenga (talk) 14:25, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

How is a chimpanzee's total number of neurons less than the number of neurons in the cerebral cortex? Bernd Jendrissek (talk) 19:38, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Pictures?
Making a list of animals by number of neurons is a pretty daunting task alone, but does each and every one of the animals listed need a picture? Considering how large the images are, and how many millions of animals there are in the world, if this article continues to grow, the pictures might take up too much space. Maybe listing the pictures should be added to obscure animals only, and not just animals that everyone has seen at least ten times. By that, I mean just give an image for animals that are not commonly heard of, but keep the ones that are there already. Anyone agree? Disagree? Cloudy fox 001 (talk) 17:05, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * That sounds like a good idea to me. Steve Dufour (talk) 17:51, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Most people will have seen a cat or a dog a few times, but as for the other species? I bet most people aren't even aware of most of those. Bernd Jendrissek (talk) 19:38, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Any reason why humans should have a drawing instead of a picture? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.86.163.223 (talk) 12:21, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Instead, compare neural mass to body mass
The article does not give any explanation as to why anyone would want to compare animals by the amount of neurons they have. What does a bigger number of neurons tell about the species? The underlying zero hypothesis would be that the more neurons the more intelligent the animal, but this of course isn't true. I've understood that a comparison that's more widely used would be that of neural tissue mass compared to total body mass. (This would bring to proportion eg. the difference between the mouse and the elephant.) This would be, in my opinion, a better topic for this article, as well. –Zinjixmaggir 08:00, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

the number of neurons an animal has could lead to insights into its behavior and nature. for example sheep have a brain that is large compared to the number of actual neurons. this is because their head butting behavior makes the sheeps brain require more padding. i believe i read somewhere that human males have a brain that is 10% larger in volume than females again, due to a little extra padding. but this makes no difference to iq between the sexes. a large number of neurons implies the potential for some form of neural activity. that activity could be problem solving, memory, complex senses such as eco location, the control of a large or complex body. this last makes the ratio between the number of neurons and body size a factor, but not a replacement for this topic. i wish this list had more entries. i cant find any similar lists on the internet. i am curious as to how many neurons some of the notably intelligent animals have. grizzly bear, African gray parrot, raven. how do all the animals that can recognize themselves in a mirror compare to each other? Gordian Plot (talk) 04:18, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Human picture
Shouldn't we get an actual picture of a human. The drawing looks out of place next to all the photos. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.27.21.27 (talk) 18:18, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree. I don't see anything "classy" about the drawing. Joja lozzo  21:45, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

I propose we use whatever picture has been selected for the Human article. They have already hashed out the issues around it. The image has an inline comment:

(see Talk:Human). Joja lozzo  13:23, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Default sort order
Could someone who knows abotu formatting actually make the list default to displaying by number of neurons? It's currently alphabetical by animal name. 87.194.30.190 (talk) 22:44, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
 * According to Help:Sorting, It is not possible to make a table appear sorted by a certain column without the user clicking on it. By default, the rows of a table always appear in the same order as in the wikitext. If you want a table to appear sorted by a certain column, you must sort the wikitext itself in that order.. Basically what this means is that the table needs to be rearranged by hand in order to come out the way you want.  As far as I'm concerned, you're welcome to do that if you feel like it. Looie496 (talk) 23:30, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Neuron counts in bird brains
Can anyone add figures for bird brains? I'm particularly looking for reference with neuron counts for pigeons and crows (or other corvids), but any common birds will help - there are none in the current article. Thanks in advance if you can help. p.r.newman (talk) 15:07, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't recall seeing any literature on that (and I've looked at a lot of literature on neuron counts), but if you want to search for some, I recommend Google Scholar as a tool. Looie496 (talk) 17:05, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
 * "I recommend Google Scholar..." That's where I live when I'm not here, unless I'm on the road to Mendeley.  Thanks, though, Looie496 - I will keep digging. :-)  Also realise I've been touching your pages elsewhere (eg Human Brain) - hope I don't become a nuisance!  p.r.newman (talk) 19:30, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Update the neuron count for human?
Is the count for humans accurate? I came across this article, which says it is upwards of 80 billion. kml (talk) 22:27, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, nevermind, I messed up sections. The figure given in the article seems in line with this article. kml (talk) 22:30, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Pigs, Cows, Sheep, Chickens
Any reason there are no numbers for pigs, cows, sheep or chicken? I'm wonder why they're not here because I would have thought their brains are the most readily available. Wegdf (talk) 05:20, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Fruit-fly neurons
I found conflicting numbers in the literature for Drosophila neurons, with some sources confirming the ~100,000 estimate, and other sources suggesting ~250,000. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brian Tomasik (talk • contribs) 15:12, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

The source you mentioned here actually says in its results section "the total number of cells is estimated as 95,000–110,000 at present. What is remarkable is that our value is less than half of the widely believed estimation (250,000)" So I am changing it to 100,000 in the table. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 156.62.9.20 (talk) 21:32, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Chelicerata
I'm interested about datas of more invertebrates, than are insects, especially for chelicerata group. There's no member of chelicerata group and it's large group both ancient and with a lot of new different evolution adaptations. Does exist data about these beings or not? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vincislao Rossellini (talk • contribs) 13:00, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Tunicates
Tunicates have nerves and neurons, according to the "Tunicate" wiki page. They do not, according to this wiki page.

Which page is wrong? It should be fixed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:BCB8:3660:6CED:4362:6F0F:D86D (talk) 02:44, 7 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks, they do have neurons. --Epipelagic (talk) 13:28, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

human neocortical neurons vs long finned whale dolphin thing
i dont understand how ~38 billion is more than 86 billion?108.9.235.147 (talk) 18:16, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

86 billion is the number in the WHOLE human brain, and humans have "only" 21 neocortical neurons compared to the 37 billions of this dolphin species. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DolphinSmile (talk • contribs) 03:33, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Other dolphins
So it turns out humans are in 2nd place, pushed out by a funny looking whale that gets stuck trying to swim through sand. I'm curious about other dolphins though. Why do we know the neuron count for the long-finned pilot whale and not other closely related species? Is it because the long-finned pilot whale is preyed on by humans and therefore readily available for research? The more familiar bottlenose dolphin might have a similar neuron count and we certainly have plenty of specimens so whether they're higher or lower should be easy to find out. — Soap — 20:29, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It looks like the original study predicted people saying that dolphins were smarter than us, and tried to push back by saying that other variables such as neuron density may factor into intelligence. Why cant we cut up a few bottlenose dolphins and see what their brains look like too?  I mean, dead ones of course, this is not an invitation to go whaling out on the sea in the name of "science".  — Soap — 19:27, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
 * It has been done:
 * for example. - Donald Albury 20:42, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I love the conflict of interest statements. But I was hoping to find a table of numbers, or even just one number, that we could add to the table here to see how the more familiar dolphins stack up against us and the pilot whale.  I didnt see that in either of the first two papers, and the other two are not ones I can access. Moreover the second study is for a different species. Its possible I missed something, as my eyesight isnt that great and there are some things that magnification doesnt really help with.    I was hoping we could fill out the table, regardless of whether we "win" or not.  My hunch is that there may exist species with even more cortical neurons than the pilot whales, that we just haven't measured yet.  — Soap — 23:11, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
 * for example. - Donald Albury 20:42, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I love the conflict of interest statements. But I was hoping to find a table of numbers, or even just one number, that we could add to the table here to see how the more familiar dolphins stack up against us and the pilot whale.  I didnt see that in either of the first two papers, and the other two are not ones I can access. Moreover the second study is for a different species. Its possible I missed something, as my eyesight isnt that great and there are some things that magnification doesnt really help with.    I was hoping we could fill out the table, regardless of whether we "win" or not.  My hunch is that there may exist species with even more cortical neurons than the pilot whales, that we just haven't measured yet.  — Soap — 23:11, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
 * for example. - Donald Albury 20:42, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I love the conflict of interest statements. But I was hoping to find a table of numbers, or even just one number, that we could add to the table here to see how the more familiar dolphins stack up against us and the pilot whale.  I didnt see that in either of the first two papers, and the other two are not ones I can access. Moreover the second study is for a different species. Its possible I missed something, as my eyesight isnt that great and there are some things that magnification doesnt really help with.    I was hoping we could fill out the table, regardless of whether we "win" or not.  My hunch is that there may exist species with even more cortical neurons than the pilot whales, that we just haven't measured yet.  — Soap — 23:11, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

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Whales
Why are there no whales in the first counting?Klinfran (talk) 07:25, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Brain size difference male/female
Reference 55 http://www.physiodigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/mit-press-evolutionary-cognitive-neuroscience-2007.pdf mentions on page 160 that there is a 16% difference in brain sizes between males and females. This used to be on the wikipedia article, but was removed towards the end of 2017, and the reference was replaced by a 1957 study instead. Eventually this again was replaced by more modern studies, including the original 2007 mit paper- but the remark never made it back in.

I understand that this might be offensive to some people and has a bit of controversy around it, but I think 16% is significant enough to make it worth mentioning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.36.81.64 (talk) 13:14, 10 June 2018 (UTC)


 * The author of the book linked is a controversial figure whose analysis is widely disputed. If using this number, one should rather cite the original paper, Neocortical neuron number in humans: Effect of sex and age (paywall), which is the source for the book. However, then it should be noted that this percentage is based on only neocortical neurons, and not the other larger sets of neuron counts the rest of this article seems to be using. It also might be noted that this study was limited to 94 Danish adult brains. Things get complicated fast when looking into the details. Probably a dedicated page on the messy history of research into sex differences in brains would be a better target for this. Tim.middleton (talk) 14:36, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Synapse count citations
I noticed that you added synapse counts for several animals in an edit in 2016, such as for the house mouse and brown rat. I wasn't able to find any reference to a synapse count in the cited articles for the table rows (house mouse, brown rat), however, and I wasn't able to find any sources at all with a count for how many synapses a house mouse had. I know it's been a long time, but do you remember where these numbers are from? —Enervation (talk) 02:38, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Significant figures
Reporting 5 significant places is absurd. There is no way that the population of species X has been surveyed in sufficient statistical detail to justify this. I will also point out that the actual number of neurons will depend on specimen age, mass, health, nutritional history, subspecies, environment, and sex (where appropriate) (not to mention genetic variations within the species). I'll also note that reporting a number, rather than a range with a confidence measure attached, is really poor practice.174.130.71.156 (talk) 21:12, 11 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia reports what reliable sources say. Using anything other than what is found in reliable sources would be original research, which is not allowed. Donald Albury 23:26, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Inaccurate citation
Citation 72 and 69 do not have any numbers pertaining to the neuron count of Orca Whales. 72 references a study with no datasets or references to neuron counts, and 69 has no references either, except to a dataset that does not have Orca Whale neuron counts either. I am writing here so that someone else can look into this and confirm it just in case I am missing anything before we make any significant changes. GabeTucker (talk) 00:00, 21 March 2023 (UTC)


 * The figure of $43.1$ for the total number of neurons in Orcinus orca is in the "S1 Table: Values from the current studies compared to published values" of the Ridgway, et al. reference. That table downloads when you click on the "Click here for additional data file" in the Supporting information section. We probably need to add a note to the citation explaining that. The other citation for O. orca is not needed. Donald Albury 13:46, 21 March 2023 (UTC)