Bird intelligence

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Cormorants used by fishermen in Southeast Asia may be able to count







Associative learning[edit]

Visual or auditory signals and their association with food and other rewards have been well studied, and birds have been trained to recognize and distinguish complex shapes.[clarification needed]This is probably an important ability that aids their survival.[clarification needed][8]

Spatial and temporal abilities[edit]


Large fruit-eating birds in tropical forests depend on trees which bear fruit at different times of the year. Many species, such as pigeons and hornbills, have been shown to be able to decide upon foraging areas according to the time of the year. Birds that show food hoarding behavior have also shown the ability to recollect the locations of food caches.[10][11] Nectarivorous birds such as hummingbirds also optimize their foraging by keeping track of the locations of good and bad flowers.[12] Studies of Western Scrub Jays also suggests that birds may be able to plan ahead. They cache food according to future needs and risk of not being able to find the food on subsequent days.[13]

Many birds follow strict time schedules in their activities. These are often dependent upon environmental cues. Birds also are sensitive to daylight length, and this awareness is especially important as a cue for migratory species. The ability to orient themselves during migrations is attributed to birds' superior sensory abilities, rather than to intelligence.

Beat induction[edit]

Research published in 2008 that was conducted with an Eleonora Cockatoo named Snowball has shown that birds can identify the beat of man-made music, an ability known as beat induction.[14]

Self awareness[edit]

The mirror test allows scientists to check if birds are conscious of themselves and able to distinguish themselves and from other animals by determining whether an animal possesses or lacks the ability to recognize itself in its own reflection. The European Magpie is the only animal besides mammals that is shown to be able to pass this test by trying to remove a colored sticker from underneath their beaks when shown in a mirror. However in 1981, Epstein, Lanza and Skinner published a paper in the journal Science in which they argued that pigeons also pass the mirror test. A pigeon was trained to look in a mirror to find a response key behind it which it then turned to peck—food was the consequence of a correct choice (i.e., the pigeon learned to use a mirror to find critical elements of its environment). Next, the bird was trained to peck at dots placed on its feathers; food was, again, the consequence of touching the dot. The latter training was accomplished in the absence of the mirror. The final test was placing a small bib on the pigeon—enough to cover a dot placed on its lower belly. A control period without the mirror present yielded no pecking at the dot. When the mirror was revealed, the pigeon became active, looked in the mirror and then tried to peck on the dot under the bib.

It is true that untrained pigeons have never been able to pass the mirror test. However, pigeons do not normally have access to mirrors and do not have the necessary experiences to use them. Giving the pigeons this experience in no way guaranteed it would pass the mirror test, since the pigeon never pecked dots on its own body in the presence of the mirror (until the final test). Despite this, the birds are not classified as being able to recognize their reflection, because those that did were trained to do so and the animal has to be able to do this without human assistance. Therefore, it must also be shown that the birds are able to do this in the wild as well with no experience, just on their own intelligence, to see if it is able to comprehend that it is looking at its own reflection on its own. However, even when an animal is trained to do this, it is still unknown if they are aware that they are looking at themselves, or are just repeating the same movements and commands that they were taught so that they may receive a treat as a reward after they have correctly completed their task.[citation needed]

Tool use[edit]

Further information: Tool use by animals § In_birds
The Woodpecker finch using a stick to impale a grub, with a second image showing it had successfully captured it.



By this definition, a Bearded Vulture (Lammergeier) dropping a bone on a rock would not be using a tool since the rock cannot be seen as an extension of the body. However the use of a rock manipulated using the beak to crack an ostrich egg would qualify the Egyptian Vulture as a tool user. Many other species, including parrots, corvids and a range of passerines, have been noted as tool users.[1]

New Caledonian Crows have been observed in the wild to use sticks with their beaks to extract insects from logs. While young birds in the wild normally learn this technique from elders, a laboratory crow named "Betty" improvised a hooked tool from a wire with no prior experience.[16] The Woodpecker Finch from the Galapagos Islands also uses simple stick tools to assist it in obtaining food. In captivity, a young Cactus Finch learned to imitate this behavior by watching a woodpecker finch in an adjacent cage. Crows in urban Japan have innovated a technique to crack hard-shelled nuts by dropping them onto crosswalks and letting them be run over and cracked by cars. They then retrieve the cracked nuts when the cars are stopped at the red light. Macaws have been shown to utilize rope to fetch items that would normally be difficult to reach.[17][18] Striated Herons (Butorides striatus) use bait to catch fish.

Observational learning[edit]


Brain anatomy[edit]

At the beginning of the 20th century, scientists argued that the birds had hyper-developed basal ganglia, with tiny mammalian-like telencephalon structures.[20] Modern studies have refuted this view.[21] The basal ganglia only occupy a small part of the avian brain. Instead, it seems that birds use a different part of their brain, the medio-rostral neostriatum/hyperstriatum ventrale (see also nidopallium), as the seat of their intelligence, and the brain-to-body size ratio of psittacines (parrots) and corvines (birds of the crow family) is actually comparable to that of higher primates.[22]


Social behavior[edit]

Further information: Bird § Social systems and Social animal






Main article: Talking birds

Birds communicate with their flockmates through song, calls, and body language. Studies have shown that the intricate territorial songs of some birds must be learned at an early age, and that the memory of the song will serve the bird for the rest of its life. Some bird species are able to communicate in a variety of dialects. For example, the New Zealand saddleback will learn the different song "dialects" of clans of its own species, much as human beings might acquire diverse regional dialects. When a territory-owning male of the species dies, a young male will immediately take his place, singing to prospective mates in the dialect appropriate to the territory he is in.[25] With over 1000 calls the Tūī is vis-à-vis and in non-provenience also flirtatiously attracts the opposite gender.[26] An analysis by a group at Massey University is that they are the most intelligent bird in not blurting. They theorize that 'each baronial song has a reason' whether this is knowledge is abstruse. Garbled, if identified could also help in population decline, expatriation and conservation, quoting Mr Hill "The greater the competition in the area, then the more likely the birds are to actually create or make their song more complex,".[27]

Recent studies indicate that some birds may have an ability to understand grammatical structures.[28]

Conceptual abilities[edit]

Evidence that birds can form abstract concepts such as same v. different has been provided by Alex, the African Grey Parrot. Alex was trained by animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg to vocally label more than 100 objects of different colors and shapes and which are made from different materials. Alex could also request or refuse these objects ('I want X') and quantify numbers of them.[29]

Macaws have been demonstrated to comprehend the concept of "left" and "right." [30][31]

Object permanence[edit]


Theory of mind[edit]

Further information: Theory of mind

A study on the Little Green Bee-eater suggests that these birds may be able to see from the point of view of a predator.[34] The Brown-necked Raven has been observed hunting lizards in complex cooperation with other ravens, demonstrating an apparent understanding of prey behavior.[35] The Western Scrub Jay hides caches of food and will later re-hide food if it was watched by another bird the first time, but only if the bird hiding the food has itself stolen food before from a cache.[36] Such an ability to see from the point of view of another individual had previously been attributed only to the great apes and sometimes elephants. Such abilities form the basis for empathy.

See also[edit]


  6. ^ Pepperberg, IM (2006) Grey parrot numerical competence: a review. Animal Cognition 9(4):377–391 doi:10.1007/s10071-006-0034-7
  8. ^ Carter, D. E. & Eckerman, D. A. 1975 Symbolic matching by pigeons: rate of learning complex discriminations predicted from simple discriminations. Science 187, 662–664.
  10. ^ Kamil, A., and R. Balda. 1985. Cache recovery and spatial memory in Clark's nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana). Journal of Experimental Psychology and Animal Behavioral Processes 11:95–111.
  11. ^ Bennett, A. T. D. 1993 Spatial memory in a food storing corvid. I. Near tall landmarks are primarily used. J. Comp. Physiol. A 173, 193–207. doi:10.1007/BF00192978
  15. ^ Jones, T. B. & Kamil, A. C. 1973 Tool-making and tool-using in the northern blue jay. Science 180, 1076–1078.
  16. ^ Crow making tools,
  20. ^ Edinger, L., (1908) The relations of comparative anatomy to comparative psychology. Journal of Comparative Neurology and psychology 18:437–457
  22. ^ Iwaniuk, A.N.; Nelson, J.E. (2003). "Developmental differences are correlated with relative brain size in birds: A comparative analysis". Canadian Journal of Zoology 81: 1913–1928. doi:10.1139/z03-190. 
  23. ^ N.J. Emery and N.S. Clayton, The mentality of crows: convergent evolution of intelligence in corvids and apes, Science 306 (2004), pp. 1903–1907
  25. ^ Environews: Saddleback Dialects, Radio live (2011)
  26. ^ The language of love, Auckland Now
  27. ^ Tui one of world's most intelligent birds, 3 News (2012)
  28. ^ Gentner, Timothy Q.; Fenn, Kimberly M.; Margoliash, Daniel; Nusbaum, Howard C. (2006). "Recursive syntactic pattern learning by songbirds". Nature 440 (7088): 1204–1207. doi:10.1038/nature04675. PMC 2653278. PMID 16641998. 
  34. ^ Watve, Milind; Thakar, Juilee; Kale, Abhijit; et al., S; Shaikh, I; Vaze, K; Jog, M; Paranjape, S (December 2002). "Bee-eaters (Merops orientalis) respond to what a predator can see". Animal Cognition 5 (4): 253–259. doi:10.1007/s10071-002-0155-6. PMID 12461603. Retrieved 7 April 2009. 
  35. ^ Yosef, Reuven; Yosef, Nufar (May 2010). "Cooperative hunting in Brown-Necked Raven (Corvus rufficollis) on Egyptian Mastigure (Uromastyx aegyptius)". Journal of Ethnology 28 (2): 385–388. doi:10.1007/s10164-009-0191-7. Retrieved 20 September 2012. 
  36. ^ Clayton, Nichola S.; Joanna M Dally; Nathan J Emery (29 April 2007). "Social cognition by food-caching corvids. The western scrub-jay as a natural psychologist". Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (Royal Society) 362 (1480): 507–522. doi:10.1098/rstb.2006.1992. PMC 2346514. PMID 17309867. 

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