Bigger skulls

London, Sept. 2: As the King of the Jungle, the lion may have the brawn, but it is the tiger that has the brains, claim scientists.

Researchers have discovered that the tiger has a far bigger brain than its big cat rival, even though it is often seen as lower down the food chain. A team of zoologists at Oxford University compared the brain cavity in the skulls of both animals and found tigers are 16 per cent bigger than lions, leopards and jaguars.

In evolutionary terms, brain size has usually been linked to intelligence. Academics have always thought that social species, such as lions, should have larger brains than solitary species, such as tigers, because of the need to handle a more complex social life within groups or prides.

“What we had not expected is that the tiger has clearly much bigger relative brain size than do the other three species, which all have similar relative brain sizes,” said Nobby Yamaguchi, the author of the study at Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit.