Animals making a living by catching rapidly moving prey seem to need bigger brains than plant eaters. As herbivores developed bigger brains (presumably under selective pressure by carnivores), carnivores evolved their own brains - a positive feedback loop - to maintain the differential.
What about us? Why are we so "brainy"?
The most ancient brain cast of a primate belongs to a 55-million-year-old creature named Tetonius Homunculus. Even that is three times larger than the expected brain size of an average mammal of its body weight. Primates have been ahead right from the start; our large brain is only an exaggeration of a pattern set at the beginning of the age of mammals (the last 70 million years)
Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould
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