Scientists Breed Big-Brained Guppies To Demonstrate Evolution's Trade-Offs

An anonymous reader writes "Scientists have long suspected that big brains come with an evolutionary price — but now they've published the first experimental evidence to support that suspicion, based on their efforts to breed big-brained fish. A Swedish team found it relatively easy to select and interbreed common guppies to produce bigger (or smaller) brains — as much as 9.3 percent bigger, to be precise (abstract). But the bigger-brained fish also tended to have smaller guts and produce fewer babies."

I for one...

[Anonymous Coward]

...oh nevermind.

Uh

[Anonymous Coward]

"But the bigger-brained fish also tended to have smaller guts and produce fewer babies"

Of course. Smart fish stay kids free to live fun and awesome lives in the wet.

That's a win!

[cps42]

Guppies make too many babies in my tank, any way. How do we order these?

Fringe benefits

[Tablizer]

Researcher: "We didn't find anything commercially useful, but at least the fish can do my taxes for me."

They were actually able to go past 9.3% on brains.

[Sheetrock]

But for some reason, the very smartest guppies had no interest in swimming at all but would just hang around the bottom of the tank, head side down.

I'd gladly trade.....

[dcigary]

...a smaller gut for a bigger brain. Alas, it was not meant to be...

Re:Friend

[rubycodez]

Woah, this intelligent guppy posts on slashdot with an ID. The ones I bred only post AC

Re:I for one...

[Guppy]

... welcome our guppy overlords?

Hello.