Re: IQ & EQ

[augwhite@neosoft.com (Toby White)]

At 04:16 PM 5/26/98 +0000, Bill Adlam wrote:

>It is encephalisation quotient which has been found very roughly to correlate 
>with 'intelligent' behaviour.  When two closely related species have great 
>differences in intelligence (e.g. humans and chimpanzees), they almost always 
>have great differences in EQ.  But relatives such as tigers and tabby cats, 
>with different brain sizes (absolute or divided by body mass) but about the 
>same EQ, have similar behaviour.  
>
>This applies less strongly to distantly related animals, and as a rule of 
>thumb performs quite well comparing major vertebrate taxa.

Has anyone tried refining the concept of EQ to get more reliable comparisons
across taxa?  Surely its possible to develop a formula that's a bit more
informative than brain size over body mass.  I suppose that there is a
limit, probably reached quite quickly, to what one can do with raw biometric
data.  

  --Toby White