In a study published in this month's issue of the Journal of Human Evolution, BAA professor Andrea Taylor and colleague Carel van Schaik (chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Zurich and adjunct professor of BAA at Duke) document a relationship between nutritional resources and brain size in orangutans from the Indonesian islands of Borneo and Sumatra. Based on a comparative analysis of crania, Orangs from Sumatra - where food resources are more stable and of better nutritional quality - have larger brain sizes than those from the more resource-depleted neighboring island of Borneo. This work provides important empirical evidence in support of the "expensive tissue hypothesis," and provides important information about the links between diet and brain size expansion in human evolution. [more]