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Cited by 153Primate Behavior and EcologyComparative Animal Anatomy StudiesMemory and Neural Mechanisms

The elephant brain in numbers

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Herculano-Houzel, Suzana, Avelino-de-Souza, Kamilla, Neves, Kleber, Porfírio, Jairo, Messeder, Débora, Mattos Feijó, Larissa, Maldonado, José, Manger, Paul R.·2014·Frontiers in Neuroanatomy
DOI 10.3389/fnana.2014.00046PMC PMC4053853
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Abstract

What explains the superior cognitive abilities of the human brain compared to other, larger brains? Here we investigate the possibility that the human brain has a larger number of neurons than even larger brains by determining the cellular composition of the brain of the African elephant. We find that the African elephant brain, which is about three times larger than the human brain, contains 257 billion (10(9)) neurons, three times more than the average human brain; however, 97.5% of the neurons in the elephant brain (251 billion) are found in the cerebellum. This makes the elephant an outlier in regard to the number of cerebellar neurons compared to other mammals, which might be related to sensorimotor specializations. In contrast, the elephant cerebral cortex, which has twice the mass of the human cerebral cortex, holds only 5.6 billion neurons, about one third of the number of neurons found in the human cerebral cortex. This finding supports the hypothesis that the larger absolute number of neurons in the human cerebral cortex (but not in the whole brain) is correlated with the superior cognitive abilities of humans compared to elephants and other large-brained mammals.

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  • Elephants have large brains with a neuron density three times that of humans (257 billion neurons).

    “Elephants have large brains with a neuron density three times that of humans (257 billion neurons; Hart et al., 2008; Herculano-Houzel et al., 2014; Shoshani et al., 2006)”

    From Do elephants really never forget? What we know about elephant memory and a call for further investigation (2025) · cites this paper as Herculano-Houzel et al., 2014

    The Results and discussion report that the African elephant brain is about three times heavier than the human brain and contains 257 billion neurons—about three times the human total. That is a neuron count, not a density: the same section reports substantially lower neuronal density in elephant cerebral cortical gray matter than in human cortical gray matter. (LLM, conf=0.91)

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Authors
Herculano-Houzel, S., Avelino-de-Souza, K., Neves, K., Porfírio, J., Messeder, D., Mattos Feijó, L., Maldonado, J., & Manger, P. R.
Affiliations
  • Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (BR)
  • University of the Witwatersrand (ZA)
ORCID
Venue
Frontiers in Neuroanatomy
Publisher
Frontiers Media SA
Published
2014-06-12
Volume
8
Pages
46-46
ISSN
1662-5129 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.3389/fnana.2014.00046
PMC
PMC4053853
OpenAlex
W1982620722
Cited by
153
References
62
Citations by year
2026: 9 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 18 · 2021: 14 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 16 · 2016: 15 · 2015: 12 · 2014: 5
FWCI
23.74
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by
Locations
  • Frontiers in Neuroanatomy (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Funders
  • James S. McDonnell Foundation
  • National Research Foundation
  • Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico
  • Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Primate Behavior and Ecology
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Urology › Comparative Animal Anatomy Studies
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
Keywords
Loxodonta africana, brain size, neuron number, cerebellum, cerebral cortex, cognitive ability

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