Spring is Here (and so are the birds)

In the past two decades or so, from fields and laboratories around the world have flowed examples of bird species capable of mental feats comparable to those found in primates. There’s a kind of bird that creates colorful designs out of berries, bits of glass, and blossoms to attract females, and another kind that hides up to thirty-three thousand seeds scattered over dozens of square miles and remembers where it put them months later. There’s a species that solves a classic puzzle at nearly the same pace as a five-year old child, and one that’s an expert at picking locks. There are birds that can count and do simple math, make their own tools, move the beat of music, comprehend basic principles of physics, remember the past, and plan for the future.

In the past, other animals have gotten all the publicity for their near-human cleverness…Now birds have joined the party. A flood of new research has turned the old views, and people are finally starting to accept that birds are far more intelligent than we ever imagined - in some ways closer to our primate relatives than to their reptilian ones.

~The Genius of Birds, by Jennifer Ackerman