For years, people believed that birds weren’t very smart. But The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman proves that idea wrong. Recent research shows that birds are far more intelligent than we ever imagined. Of course, “genius” here isn’t about solving puzzles or writing books, it’s about knowing how to navigate challenges and adapt to the world around them. And birds are remarkably good at that.

Each chapter focuses on a special skill that birds have, like their ability to use tools, solve problems, communicate, or adapt to different environments. Ackerman also talks about bird brain size and how clever they are across different species.

Learning about these abilities might make you see birds in a whole new way. They’re not just pretty creatures flying around. They’re smart, creative, and full of surprises.

As someone who doesn’t know much about birds, I found this book really interesting. However, I wish it included pictures of the bird varieties being described. That would’ve made it even more enjoyable and easier to follow.

If you’re curious about how birds think and survive, The Genius of Birds is a fascinating and easy-to-read book. It will leave you amazed by how clever birds really are.

Summary

The Measure of Intelligence in Birds

When scientists assess an animal’s intelligence, they often consider how well it thrives and reproduces across diverse environments. By this standard, birds rank among nature’s greatest success stories.

As a class, birds have been around for over 100 million years, adapting to countless challenges and inventing ingenious strategies for survival. Their unique forms of problem-solving and creativity sometimes surpass even our own in surprising ways, showcasing their remarkable adaptability and innovation.

The Genius of Bird Brains

Birds may lack a cortex like ours, the part of the brain we associate with intelligence, but their brains hold fascinating surprises. Some bird species have relatively large brains for their body size, much like humans. What’s even more remarkable is that their brains are densely packed with neurons in key areas and these neurons are linked in ways that mirror our own.

Adding to their brilliance, bird brains are lateralized, meaning they have specialized “sides” for processing different types of information. They also have a unique ability to replace old brain cells with new ones exactly when they’re needed, an extraordinary feature that supports their adaptability and sharp problem-solving skills.

Cracking the Code of Bird Intelligence

Defining intelligence in birds is a complex task, but measuring it is even trickier. To understand their cognitive abilities, scientists design puzzles that test problem-solving and innovation, comparing performances across species and even among individuals of the same species.

Take two closely related birds: the bullfinch (Loxigilla barbadensis), a clever, fearless opportunist, and the black-faced grassquit (Tiaris bicolor), its more cautious and conservative counterpart. Despite being nearly identical genetically and sharing the same environment and social systems, their intelligence differs dramatically. The bullfinch’s evolutionary story might offer some clues.

Researcher Louis Lefebvre speculates that dietary constraints in Barbados may have influenced this divergence. Unlike many birds, bullfinches don’t rely on carotenoids from food to produce their red plumage, which suggests females may favor males with traits other than colorful feathers, perhaps favoring those adept at finding new food sources. In essence, smarter males might have a reproductive edge.

Interestingly, brain size isn’t always a reliable indicator of intelligence. For example, the little stint, a type of sandpiper, has a relatively large brain for its body size but spends its days simply chasing waves and snacking on invertebrates.

A more accepted measure of bird cognition today is their ability to innovate. Birds that solve problems creatively or adapt quickly to new challenges are often considered more intelligent, shedding light on the intricate workings of avian minds.

What Birds Teach Us About Ourselves

We share more biological traits with birds than you might expect. The differences that set humans apart from other creatures often stem not from new genes or cells but from subtle changes in how existing ones are used. This shared biology makes birds invaluable as model systems for studying our own brains and behavior.

Both humans and certain bird species have followed different evolutionary paths yet arrived at strikingly similar solutions to nature’s challenges, a phenomenon known as convergent evolution. For instance, both have evolved relatively large brains for their body size, similar patterns of brain activity during sleep, and analogous circuits for learning song in birds and speech in humans.

Recent studies highlight even more intriguing parallels. Researchers have found that the gene activity in human brains during speech learning resembles that of birds learning to sing, suggesting a shared core pattern of gene expression. Additionally, the circuits governing social behavior in bird brains mirror those in ours, running on comparable genes and chemicals.

These remarkable similarities make birds an excellent model for exploring how brains learn and remember, the processes behind language creation, the mental strategies for problem-solving, and even how we navigate our environment and social connections.

Why Are Some Birds Smarter and Bolder Than Others?

What makes one bird fearless and opportunistic while another is cautious and reserved? Studies suggest that differences in feeding habits may shape learning abilities and the underlying brain structures that support them. Birds with more varied and demanding diets might develop sharper problem-solving skills as an evolutionary advantage.

However, not all behaviors that seem intelligent are the result of complex thought. Some arise from simple, reflexive processes. A striking example is the mesmerizing collective behavior of flocking birds. These movements are not guided by group “thought” but emerge from self-organization.

Each bird interacts with about seven nearby neighbors, making individual decisions based on maintaining speed, distance, and direction. By copying how sharply a neighbor turns, the entire flock can change direction in just over half a second. This elegant system demonstrates how seemingly intelligent behaviors can result from straightforward rules of interaction.

The Myth of the “Small Bird Brain”

For centuries, we believed birds had smaller brains for a practical reason: to support their extraordinary flight abilities. A marsh hawk’s wide circles, a chimney swift’s endless aerial lifestyle, or a chickadee’s lightning-fast course changes seemed to demand lighter bodies, including smaller brains.

Brain tissue is incredibly costly. It’s heavy and metabolically expensive, second only to the heart in energy consumption. Neurons, though tiny, use about ten times more energy relative to their size compared to other cells. This led to the assumption that evolution trimmed birds’ gray matter to conserve energy for flight. As writer Peter Matthiessen once put it, “The power of flight, which we regard as the bird’s most magnificent attainment, has also been the evolutionary adaptation which has held it well behind the mammals in intelligence.”

Flight is indeed an energy-intensive endeavor. In a pigeon-sized bird, flying uses ten times the energy of resting. For smaller birds, like finches, short bursts of flapping can consume up to 30 times their resting energy. Given these demands, it’s no wonder we assumed birds solved problems not with intelligence but by simply flying away from them.

How Birds Became the Masters of Featherweight Efficiency

Evolution has fine-tuned birds’ bodies to be as lightweight and efficient as possible, eliminating unnecessary parts and streamlining others to support the energy demands of flight. For instance, birds have no bladders, and their livers are reduced to a mere half gram. Unlike their reptilian relatives, birds have only one functional ovary, on the left side, with the right one lost over evolutionary time. During most of the year, their reproductive organs, including testes and oviducts, shrink to vanishingly small sizes, becoming active only during the breeding season.

Even at the genetic level, birds are designed for efficiency. Their genomes are the smallest of any amniotes (a group that includes reptiles and mammals), typically hovering around 1 billion base pairs compared to a mammal’s 1–8 billion. This condensed genome, resulting from fewer repetitive elements and numerous DNA deletions, may allow birds to regulate their genes more rapidly, a critical adaptation for the high-energy demands of flight.

This featherweight frugality traces back to the evolutionary origins of birds during the Jurassic period, around 150–160 million years ago. Birds evolved gradually from theropod dinosaurs, shrinking steadily over 50 million years. Their smaller size allowed them to explore new food niches, evade predators, and develop climbing, gliding, and eventually powered flight.

Did their brains shrink along with their bodies? Surprisingly, no. The theropod ancestors of birds already had “hyperinflated” brains long before flight evolved. Their visual centers expanded to manage larger eyes and superior vision, essential for avoiding collisions and coordinating movement while jumping from tree to tree. Regions for processing sound and motion were also highly developed, supporting the neurological sophistication needed to explore new habitats and escape threats.

Remarkably, birds retained their large brains by holding onto juvenile traits as adults, a process called paedomorphosis. This evolutionary strategy, which keeps the head and face baby-like, parallels how humans evolved our large brains. Bird brains, like feathers, emerged long before birds themselves—a testament to their evolutionary ingenuity.

The Shared Chemistry of Social Brains

The circuits that control social behavior in birds bear a striking resemblance to those in human brains, linked by a shared evolutionary history. These circuits are influenced by ancient molecules known as nonapeptides, which originally evolved to regulate egg-laying in our distant bilaterian ancestors. Over time, these molecules took on broader social functions, shaping behavior in both birds and humans.

In our brains, these nonapeptides are called oxytocin and vasopressin. Oxytocin, produced in the hypothalamus, is often nicknamed the “love chemical” or “trust hormone” because of its role in fostering trust, empathy, and social bonding. It’s also critical in mammals for giving birth, lactation, and maternal bonding.

Birds have their own versions of these neurohormones, known as mesotocin and vasotocin. Differences in social behavior among bird species are tied to subtle variations in the expression of the genes for these molecules. Similarly, in humans, oxytocin and vasopressin influence social dynamics, reducing anxiety and promoting connection.

This shared neurochemical foundation underscores the deep evolutionary links between birds and humans, offering insight into how complex social behaviors have emerged and adapted across species.

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Author: Jennifer Ackerman

Publication date: 12 April 2016

Number of pages: 352 pages

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