The Genius of Birds

by Jennifer Ackerman

For birds, it seems, the quality of relationships, not the quantity, calls for additional brainpower. The mental challenge is not remembering the individual characteristics of hundreds of individuals in large flocks or roosts or managing a large number of casual relationships. The really demanding task—at least from a psychological and cognitive point of view—is forming close alliances, especially forging bonds with a mate and providing long-term parental care to young.

“Where maternity certainty makes females care for offspring at home, paternity uncertainty and a potential for offspring in several broods make males invest in communal benefits and public goods,”

But here’s the really amazing thing. A scrub jay will think to do this—to resort to these clever cache-protection tactics—only if he’s had his own piratical experience. Birds that have never pilfered themselves hardly ever recache. In other words, say the researchers, “it takes a thief to know a thief.”

when researchers at McGill University scanned the brains of older adults who used GPS and those who didn’t, they found that the people accustomed to navigating on their own had more gray matter in the hippocampus and showed less overall cognitive impairment than those who relied on GPS. As we lose the habit of forming cognitive maps, we may be losing gray matter (and along with it, if Tolman is right, our capacity for social understanding).