The Genius of Birds

by Jennifer Ackerman

Most psychologists and neuroscientists agree that there are different kinds of human intelligence—emotional, analytic, spatial, creative, practical, to name a few. But they still debate about whether the types are independent or correlated. In his theory of “multiple intelligences,” Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner identifies eight different types of intelligence and suggests that they’re independent. They are bodily, linguistic, musical, mathematical or logical, naturalistic (sensitivity to the natural world), spatial (knowing where you are relative to a fixed location), interpersonal (sensing and being in tune with others), and intrapersonal (understanding and controlling one’s own emotions and thoughts)—a

In some cities, you can find smoked cigarette butts in sparrow nests, which effectively function as a parasite repellent. Butts from smoked cigarettes retain large amounts of nicotine and other toxic substances, including traces of pesticides that repel all kinds of harmful creepy crawlies—an apparently ingenious new use of materials.