Little brains or not

The more I try to get away from my computer, the more reasons I find to get back to it. To rest my body from the numbing position on this stolen computer chair, I go off to relax in my recliner and read. (Well sometimes I pull weeds or maybe even stop to cook a meal.) Last week I found a book describing the making of the animal kingdom. The author, Sean B. Carroll, a biologist, uses results from many studies to show how there is DNA in the most primitive animals that also exists in our being - little markers that tell the cells where to put apendages or many other particular parts to make our bodies what they are. The proof that these occur come from examples of those pieces of DNA being misplaced in fruit flies or other critters resulting in a leg coming out of the head or some other such impossible growth. Some of this type of research came from the study and discoveries noted after a condition of cyclops was found in a great number of sheep feeding on plants with a certain chemical that caused the monstrous development. The unusual alert brain seems to have been excited in a great many more folks enticed into studying science than I thought. The title of the book is ENDLESS FORMS MOST BEAUTIFUL - A few words lifted from some sentence written by Charles Darwin.
Alternately I am also reading THE ANCESTOR'S TALE, which I began month's ago because I like to challenge my thought process and have done so by reading many books written by Richard Dawkins. In this huge volume he is tracing our ancestors and how we are all related and came one way or another from the heart of warmest Africa. But beyond that he gives plausible reasons why we developed as we did. Oddly he begins the trace from billions of years in the past through genes rather than going backwards through our parents and grandparents the way I am doing. At the moment I am on a chapter discussing why our brains are the size they are and the significance of the gray matter and its size to each species. Not a simple case of ratio to body weight and he has the mathematics from studies to prove his points.
Both books are thought provoking and have occasional humor. So what if my brain is smaller than yours.
Naomi Sherer