It's official: 'Bird brain' no longer an insult

Birds can out-perform humans in certain mental tasks, like navigation, and show complex behaviours usually only associated with apes, monkeys and dolphins, scientists said Thursday.

Researchers from several universities spoke about the cognitive capabilities of birds at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston.

A Grey parrot named Griffin, for example, can place objects into specific orders and speak words in specific patterns. This is a skill usually only seen non-human primates, such as monkeys.

"The fact that we are finding this in animals so far removed from primates is exciting," said Irene Pepperberg, a researcher at MIT and Brandeis University.

Putting words and objects in order is a basic skill of language and was thought to be a function of a part of the primate brain called "Broca's area."

Pepperberg said she doesn't think Griffin is necessarily using language when he repeats phrases, but she said it does show that he understands that complex tasks must be done in a certain order.

Because both primates and some birds can perform tasks, they either evolved the skill separately or inherited it from a older, common ancestor, said Pepperberg.

If the second theory is correct, the ability might be found in other animal groups, as well.

Birds also excel at learning songs, said Donald Kroodsma of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

Some species of song bird can memorize up to 2,000 songs, including those of neighbouring species. That's something monkeys and apes can't do.

"The special abilities that many songbirds have, just like we have, relate to the ability to learn a vocal communication system. But our closest living relatives, the non-human primates, cannot," said Kroodsma.

And when it comes to flight navigation, birds have us land-dwelling mammals beat cold.

Birds are capable of incredible feats of navigation, from migrating across continents to locating thousands of seed caches months after placing them.

Birds such as nutcrackers and jays are able to find their nut stashes by using multiple landmarks, said Alan Kamil of the University of Nebraska.

For each seed cache, Kamil said, the birds use two landmarks and remember the direction from each landmark to the cache. They can find the cache later at the intersection of those two lines.

Pigeons are also renowned from their homing ability, said Verner Bingman of Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

Bingman compared the electrical activity of a pigeon's hippocampus to that of a rat as the animals walked around a room.

The hippocampus is the part of the brain that learns and remembers spatial information.

Bingman found that the rat's brain had relatively simple firing patterns, while those of the pigeon were much more complex, triggered by more than just location.

However, the structure of the hippocampus itself is similar in the two animals.

Bingman said the differences between the spatial abilities of the two animals probably lie in structures outside of the hippocampus.

The annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science runs until Tuesday.