A New Study may Explain why not all Birds Actually have Bird Brains

A New Study may Explain why not all Birds Actually have Bird Brains

Bird brains are a mystery. Despite the small size of their noggins, parrots and corvids exhibit remarkable intelligence, solving some puzzles as well as primates.

Previous studies have shown that the brains of songbirds and parrots have a much higher number of neurons in their foreheads, sometimes more than monkeys.

But while the idea that cognitive performance is tied to an animal’s total number of neurons seems intuitive, the evidence is lacking.

A recent comparison of monkeys, corvids, and pigeons found that total numbers of neurons are a poor predictor of absolute cognitive power, although they may account for an animal’s learning speed or adaptation to circumstances.

A New Study may Explain why not all Birds Actually have Bird Brains
A New Study may Explain why not all Birds Actually have Bird Brains

Other studies disagree. Their findings show that the total number of neurons in a specific area of ​​the birds’ foreheads, called the pallium, is important for memory, learning, reasoning and problem solving.

But which numbers should we count? Relative number of neurons, or absolute? In other words, is being big enough to make a bird smart? Or on the other hand is everything about how large their mind is with respect to their body?

A team of researchers now thinks it’s a bit of both, a previously overlooked compromise.

First, the authors estimated the number of neurons in the pallium of 111 bird species. Then, they compared those numbers to more than 4,400 modern ways of using food or feed for birds.

Ultimately, they found that bird species with a greater number of neurons in their pallium were also more likely to be innovative.

However, while there were more neurons in the pallium, there were fewer elsewhere in the brain.

That’s what the creators presumed “assuming a huge region of a bird’s forebrain contains an excessively enormous number of neurons, this ought to deliver a mind that is moderately huge and relative to its body size.” as far as,” the creators finish up.

The findings suggest that bird intelligence depends on the “asymmetric allocation of neurons to cognitive tasks.”

Thus, the authors argue that their findings support the hypothesis that intelligence depends on the total number of neurons and the way those neurons connect different regions of the brain.

In short, measuring intelligence is much more complicated than counting neurons or determining how densely those cells are located in a given location.

Instead, the authors believe that bird intelligence is related to the control and coordination of widely distributed networks in the brain.

“This last finding is consistent with the notion that animals with larger brains just because their bodies are larger are not necessarily the most intelligent,” the authors write.

James Webb Space Telescope’s first image of the most Distant known Star

When the researchers compared the growth of all the bird species in their study, they found that the birds developed more slowly because the newborns had more neurons in their pallium.

This suggests that high intelligence in birds may require an additional stage of brain development after hatching, during which the pallium is shortened.

“The amount of time chicks spend in the nest developing their brains may also play an important role in the evolution of intelligence,” says biologist Louis Lefebvre from McGill University in Canada.

“Bigger types of crows and parrots, known for their knowledge, invest more energy in the home, giving the cerebrum additional opportunity to develop and gather pial neurons.”

The same can be said for human development compared to chimpanzees or bonobos. Our brains are three times the size of other primates, and we take longer to grow.

Recent brain research also suggests that human intelligence is superior to other primate intelligences not because of our brain size, but because our brains are more flexible or have greater coordination.

The same can happen in birds.

What makes some animal species smarter than others is an open question for scientists. So until we know more, perhaps it’s wise to mock bird brains simply because of their size.