Birds Are Brainy

Bird-watching takes on a whole new life when you know fascinating facts about birds’ brains!

Birds have suffered cruel treatment over the years, in part because humans have failed to recognize that birds are intelligent, feeling creatures.

New studies from respected university researchers have shown that birds have complex neurological systems that perform the same functions that the physically larger brains of cats, dogs, and humans do. Because of this recent research, biologists are doing away with terminology that refers to birds’ brains as primitive and have instead begun describing bird anatomy and intelligence with the same language that’s used for other types of animals.

Examples of bird intelligence include birds’ abilities to create, use, and modify tools and engage in complex, meaningful communication. Both of these abilities were previously believed to be unique to humans.

Some Shrewd Birds

• The Clark’s nutcracker, discovered by explorers Lewis and Clark, hides upward of 30,000 pine seeds over an area of 200 square miles in the late fall and finds up to 90 percent of the seeds over the following eight monthsdespite the fact that many of them are buried in snow.
• Pigeons can tell a Monet painting from a Picasso piece and can communicate using visual symbols on a computer.
• Carrion crows in Japan drop walnuts in front of cars stopped at intersections, fly off when the lights turn green, and return to reclaim the cracked nuts when the lights turn red again.
• A parrot’s vocabulary can include more than 100 words, which parrots can use meaningfully to name objects or even express desires.
• African honeyguides fly back and forth to tip off badgers to the location of beehives so that they can get the leftovers. These birds also perform the same task for humans in order to get a share of the honey.
• New Zealand saddlebacks learn to imitate other birds’ “dialects” in order to stake claims on their territory.

Confining birds to cages thwarts their natural intelligence and abilities and condemns them to lives of boredom, frustration, and isolation. To see for yourself how smart birds are, consider observing them up close and personal by bird-watching in your own back yard.