A new study, released this February in the journal Nature Neuroscience Reviews is aimed at plucking the stereotypical bird intelligence theories and biases from scientific inquiry and replacing them with a new concept of bird brainpower.

Neuroscientist Dr. Erich D. Jarvis of Duke was the principal author of the piece and one of the founding leaders of the Avian Brain Nomenclature Consortium – a group of 29 international scientists who have been studying avian intelligence over the past seven years.

Jarvis, et al, believed that faulty, prejudiced scientific nomenclature was hampering valid scientific research into avian intelligence.

“Names have a powerful influence on the experiments we do and the way we think. Old terminology has hindered scientific progress,” Jarvis said.

The consortium hopes to initiate a mass migration from the conventional views of bird intelligence posited a century ago by Ludwig Edinger a German neurobiologist and the father of modern comparative anatomy. Edinger, like many scientists of his time, believed in a linear model of evolution – from old to new or lower to higher. Birds fit just above reptiles.

Mammals as the newest evolved creatures were thought to be more advanced with humans on top of the heap. Comparison of mammalian and avian brains showed the bottom third of mammalian brains – the old part – composed of clusters of neurons with the top two-thirds – the neocortex – composed of layers of cells. Avian brains, on the other hand, were composed entirely of clusters, thus of lesser intelligence.

Breakthroughs in scientific techniques have called this rationale into question. Dr. Harvey Karten is a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego. Karten, a member of the consortium, has long questioned the conventional view of bird brains.

According to the article in Nature Neuroscience Review, studies by Karten and others show that while the avian brain is wholly composed of clusters, those clusters have different functions. The lower clusters appear to react and act much like the bottom clusters of mammalian brains. The higher clusters, however, respond more like the layers of cells in the mammalian neocortex, facilitating sensory processing and motor control.

Of course scientific literature is riddled with anecdotal evidence of avian intelligence and adaptability. Darwin noted the “tool-using” traits of the woodpecker finch on his beloved Galapagos Islands. The woodpecker finch will use a twig or cactus spine to pry insects from cavities in tree bark. The finch appears to realize when it has a good tool. After retrieving the insect, the finch will stand on its tool while dispatching its prey then carry the tool with it from branch to branch and/or tree to tree while foraging.

Carrion crows in Japan wait for red lights and then place walnuts in a busy intersection. When the light turns green autos crush the nuts and when the light turns red again the crows gather their bounty.

In an experiment, a Caledonian crow named Betty is given food in the bottom of a four-inch cylinder. Next she is given a collection of wires. Betty surveys the wires and chooses the four-inch one, bends one end into a hook and retrieves the food.

There are many more examples. The Clark’s nutcracker, a bird of the western U.S., may collect as many as 30,000 seeds during November and cache them throughout a 200-square-mile area. During the next eight months, the nutcracker will retrieve more than 90 percent of its stash.

Some, but not all, little green herons have learned to drop small objects on the surface of the water to attract fish. The fact that only some herons learn to do this leads scientists to believe there are varying degrees of intelligence, even among species of birds.

According to Jarvis, “... this nomenclature will help people understand that evolution has created more than one way to generate complex behavior — the mammal way and the bird way. And they’re comparable to one another. In fact, some birds have evolved cognitive abilities that are far more complex than in many mammals.”

Oy vey! That Einstein was such a birdbrain.

(Don Hendershot can be reached at ddihen@juno.com.)