The Genius of Birds

Introduction
 
THE GENIUS OF BIRDS
 
For a long time, the knock on birds was that they re stupid. Beady eyed and nut brained. Reptiles with wings. Pigeon heads. Tur- keys. They fly into windows, peck at their reflections, buzz into
power lines, blunder into extinction.
Our language reflects our disrespect. Something worthless or un- appealing is for the birds. An ineffectual politician is a lame duck. To lay an egg is to flub a performance. To be henpecked is to be ha- rassed with persistent nagging. Eating crow is eating humble pie. The expression bird brain, for a stupid, foolish, or scatterbrained person, en- tered the English language in the early 1920s because people thought of birds as mere flying, pecking automatons, with brains so small they had no capacity for thought at all.
That view is a gone goose. 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 remem- bers 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 to the beat of music, comprehend basic prin- ciples 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. Chimps make stick spears to hunt smaller primates and dolphins communicate in a complex system of whistles and clicks. Great apes console one another and elephants mourn the loss of their own.
Now birds have joined the party. A flood of new research has over- turned the

JENNIFER ACKERMAN has been writing about science, nature, and human biology for almost three decades. Her most recent books include Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream: A Day in the Life of Your Body; Ah-Choo: The Uncommon Life of Your Common Cold; Chance in the House of Fate: A Natural History of Heredity; and Notes from the Shore. A contributor to Scientific American, National Geographic, The New York Times, and many other publications, Ackerman is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Nonfiction, a Bunting Fellowship, and a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

[A] gloriously provocative and highly entertaining book. Jennifer Ackerman provides a masterly survey of research in the last two decades that has produced a revolution in our understanding of bird cognition. The Genius of Birds [is] important not only for what it says about birds, but also about the human ingenuity entailed in unraveling the mysteries of the avian brain. It is at once a book of knowledge but also a work of wonder and an affirmation of the astonishing complexity of our world. Wall Street Journal

Lovely, celebratory. For all the belittling of bird brains, [Ackerman] shows them to be uniquely impressive machines . . .   New York Times Book Review 

Richly researched . . . The Genius of Birds provides engrossing evidence that will have readers looking at birds in a completely new way.   The Daily Progress

A lyrical testimony to the wonders of avian intelligence.   Scientific American

Ackerman is a pro at parsing scientific con­cepts in an accessible style, and her lyrical writing underscores her appreciation for the beauty and adaptability of birds.   BookPage
 
Ackerman writes with a light but assured touch, her prose rich in fact but economical in delivering it. Fans of birds in all their diversity will want to read this one.   Kirkus Reviews
 
Ackerman offers plenty of interesting tidbits and backs them up with the relevant history or science, using footnotes to avoid cluttering the text with anything that might slow a reader down. This is one of those terrific books that makes a scientific topic fun without dumbing it down.   Washington Independent Review of Books

I love birds; always have. The only thing better than love is love plus deep appreciation. The Genius of Birds is a journey of deep appreciation for the beautiful geniuses all around us, in our gardens, sharing our air, and