A man whose brain was more than double the average weight holds the record for the heaviest thinking organ ever recorded. Sadly for the owner of this giant cerebrum, however, bigger doesn’t always mean better, and in this case resulted in intellectual disabilities before an untimely death in a mental health institute.
According to Guinness World Records, the accolade for the heaviest brain belongs to an unnamed man who lived and died in the Netherlands in the late 19th century. After suffering from epilepsy and developmental problems, the unfortunate brainbox passed away at the Meerenberg Asylum at just 21 years of age.
During the man’s autopsy in 1899, Dutch pathologist Gerard Christiaan van Walsem recorded a brain weight of 2.85 kilograms (6 pounds 4.5 ounces). Typically, human brains range between 0.9 and 2 kilograms in weight (2 pounds to 4 pounds 6.5 ounces), with the average being around 1.35 kilograms (3 pounds).
Funnily enough, human brains have actually been shrinking for the past several thousand years and researchers aren’t entirely sure why. According to one study published in 2021, the reduction in brain size may have something to do with the “externalization of knowledge” resulting from the invention of writing and other forms of data storage.
The authors also speculate that the evolution of complex societies may have reduced the need for large brains as we are now able to rely on “distributed cognition” for collective rather than individual decision-making – just like ants!
And while there’s no indication that human brains are likely to become insect-like in size, we do know that having a smaller brain doesn’t necessarily make you less clever – just as a larger one doesn’t always increase intelligence. In 2019, researchers looked at the cranial volume and cognitive abilities of more than 13,500 people in the UK, concluding that IQ was not determined by size.
Instead, brain structure and connectivity are likely to be more important than size when it comes to cognitive capacity. That’s why women and men retain the same intelligence despite male brains being around 11 percent larger, reflecting differences in body size between the sexes.
Research has also found differences in cranial volume between different global populations, with East Asians displaying the largest brains with an average size of 1,415 cubic centimeters (86.3 cubic inches). European brains, meanwhile, tend to hover around 1,362 cubic centimeters (83.1 cubic inches) while African cerebrums measure 1,268 cubic centimeters (77.4 cubic inches).
Despite these differences, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that any one population is more or less intelligent than another, underlying the fact that size really doesn’t matter.
