Packs of hunting dogs, troops of baboons, herds of antelope: when people observe social animals, they are often struck by how intelligent they seem, and recent studies suggest that sociality has played a key role in the evolution of larger brain size among several orders of mammals. But new research from two evolutionary biologists, John Finarelli of the University of Michigan and John Flynn of the American Museum of Natural History, calls this hypothesis into question—at least for the Carnivora.