Because of their small
brain size and poor performance in classical conditioning
exercises in laboratories, birds were erroneously
believed to be stupid - hence the expression, “birdbrain.
We now know that the amount of cerebral cortex
and frontal lobe tissue (part of the brain responsible
for intelligence or thinking vs. brain tissue utilized
for physical and emotional activity) in a bird’s
brain is huge - brain tissue previously thought
to be more basal in its abilities has now been
discovered to be made up of neural connections
indicative of a very intelligent species. Birds
are not feathered dogs or winged cats; birds look
at the world differently than do other mammals,
and they react differently to sights, sounds, and
situations. It has been discovered that birds assimilate
and learn things differently than mammals. With
our current level of knowledge about birds, their
intelligence is now likened to a four-five year
old human child (dogs are assumed to be equivalent
to a two-three year old child), and it is quite
probable that their intelligence is not yet fully
appreciated by us.
BIRDS TRUE CAPABILITIES
Pigeons have easily learned
to differentiate pictures painted by different
artists, such as Picasso and Monet (they are asked
to peck at pictures painted by certain artists
and are more accurate than most people, since they
are so detail-oriented). Crows have been observed
to manufacture tools in controlled experiments;
even though they had never encountered wire before,
within minutes they thought to bend wire to make
a tool to obtain food from a tube. There are many,
many more examples.
Dr. Irene Pepperberg has demonstrated that her
African Grey parrots can answer, in perfect English,
questions like how many objects on a tray have
two, three or four sides and which colors they
are, and what objects are made of—cork, bark,
plastic or wood. Her parrot, Alex, after learning
his colors, asked, “What color is Alex?” Once
told he was gray, he was able to identify other
objects that were gray, even though never trained.
Once when Alex was 1 ½ years old, he was
in his cage when Dr. Pepperberg was hand-feeding
some baby parrots. Alex asked, “What are
you doing?” She said she was feeding some
baby birds. Alex replied, “Alex is a baby
bird!”
Now we know that birds don’t just mimic,
but truly think. The definition of true cognition
is when an animal solves a problem under novel
conditions, and even the most cynical scientist
has had to admit that birds have an ability to
think, previously only thought to be possible by
humans.
HOW BIRDS THINK
Birds are thought to think in
pictures or images, whereas people think in thoughts
or words. Since a bird thinks in pictures, it is
easy for him to notice, and be suspicious of and
stressed by, seemingly unimportant sights in his
caged environment - a new bush outside his window,
new wallpaper, a skateboard on top of a table or
even a different colored food in his food dish.
This ability to memorize everything in a picture/memory
is what allows a bird to migrate. It used to be
thought that migration was “hard-wired” or
part of a genetic memory for a bird, but that has
been proven to be false. Birds must be taught where
to migrate (remember the great documentary called “Coming
Home” where the man taught the geese how
to follow his aircraft to teach them how to migrate?).
If a bird isn’t taught or shown how and where
to migrate, he stays where he is and dies if the
conditions are too cold or absent of food. Yet
shown once, these geniuses can memorize migratory
routes thousands of miles long (the Arctic hen
migrates 18,000 miles roundtrip every year).
