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The Pea-Brained Picky Eater

How generalist eating helped with survival for the earliest (and modern) humans.

Max N
4 min readApr 9, 2020
Photo by Lily Banse on Unsplash

Humans are omnivorous. You probably know that. The human body is built to consume a variety of food. Variety is a biological necessity.

The picky eaters or animals that have a specialized diet of eating only one plant get everything they need from a small number of foods. They have a highly specialized digestive system and because they only focus on eating one thing, they have less brainpower compared to omnivores.

A specialized animal like a koala bear has a tiny brain. Zoologists theorize that koala bears once had more varied food selection and therefore larger brains. Over time, as they evolved to shrink their food choices so did the size of their brain.

The disadvantage for the picky eaters in the animal kingdom is if they only eat one plant species and those plants were to go endangered or disappear by disease or drought, the entire species is in trouble. Generalist eaters or omnivores can live about anywhere and still manage to have access to food. If there is a food shortage on a particular plant or animal, they can move on to eating something else.

The brain of the omnivore is larger due to its dietary flexibility. This means having a complex brain…

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Max N
Max N

Written by Max N

A writer that writes about JavaScript and Python to beginners. If you find my articles helpful, feel free to follow.

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