The squirrel monkey forebrain has 1.34 billion neurons. Housecats got 249.83 mil. Humans are at 16 billion. Scott Alexander six years ago proposed neural-value as moral-value: cats are 1.6% of a human, lower than pigs (I recall Garfield noting this). The squirrel-monkey would be about 8% so don't eat 'em. If we're still letting Scott Alexander use proxies, I'll take the squirrel-monkey for proxy of other platyrrhines.
Lately we have other equations. Douglas Jones has mammalian brain mass = x.75 where x is body mass. But neural count is usually y.67 where y is brain "size" (volume); so just because it's a blue whale doesn't mean it's a genius. So: primates. Here neurons grow linearly with size. For primates, more brains mean more smarts.
Worldbuilders should take note when designing sentient species. Dwarf species won't be spacefaring. Beware the giants.
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