The human development of larger brains was an interesting confluence of factors. It turns out that the arrangement of the muscles on the skull that power our jaws also restricts or allows the growth of the braincase. When Homo erectus (which still had relatively small brains and powerful jaws) developed the use of fire some 400,000 years ago, the ability to cook food made it much easier to extract the nutritive value from the food, allowing for smaller, less powerful jaws, and less robust stomachs. This in turn allowed for bigger braincases and the resources to power bigger brains. But this was a situation specific to the quirks of our anatomy; in general it does not have to be that brains and brawn are mutually exclusive, if you can get enough nutrition to power both. Dolphins and other whales have very large brains, but are also extremely powerful animals.Jericho wrote:Actually that brings up another question. One of the many reasons we humans developed intellect in the first place (yes i consider humans to be smart) was our frail physique or the other way around that our big brains made powerful ape physique obsolete (mountain chimps are no joke).
I don't agree that brains always win over brawn in evolution; if it did, you'd expect that nearly every type of animal would inevitably become very smart, which hasn't happened. Selection pressures can result in some very strange and non-intuitive outcomes: consider birds like the peacock or bird of paradise, where male physical features that are actually hurtful to survival are encouraged through arbitrary female selection preferences. The Delrias and their ancestors have had high technology for more than a million years, and so are pretty far removed from the processes of "natural" selection based on environmental pressures or predator/prey relationships. Instead, Delrias selection pressures are societal; Delrias social status (and therefore breeding priority) is based on physical intimidation, and so selection is in favor of larger and more aggressive individuals. The related Morat do not have as violent a social structure, and so do not have the same selection pressure for size and strength. But in the case of the Delrias and Morat, intelligence and size/strength are not an either/or proposition; the Morat are not smarter than the Delrias just because they are less strong. Large brains and big muscles each require a lot of nutrition to power, but once you've got high technology, obtaining lots of food is really not a serious problem.Jericho wrote:Anyway what i wonder is what could possible have motivated the delrias need for physical prowess when clearly brains wins over brawns in evolutionary terms. Were they competing with gigantic predators? (yes i'm well aware that they themselves are gigantic predators). This question also applies to the Niberen which i assume are on similar intellectual capacity as us Humans.
The Nibiren are much closer to their "natural" evolutionary roots, and so presumably their size has a direct link to their environment.