City Birds

“Birds breeding in city centres, or “urban adapters” … were found to have larger brains relative to their body size.

Previous studies have highlighted the link between larger brains and behavioural innovation in birds and mammals.

Scientists say this new evidence is the first to show that brain size is a key factor for animals’ survival in urban environments.”

— “Adaptable urban birds have bigger brains,” Ella Davies, BBC Earth News

Related?:

“Human Facial Expression From the Perspective of a Pigeon,” Kara Rogers, Britannica blog

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

This entry was posted on April 28, 2011 at 10:07 pm and is filed under birds, environment, pigeons, research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Dog Gone Says:
April 29, 2011 at 11:50 am
I am something of a bio-sciences geek, so I find things like this especially interesting. London cabbies have different adaptations to their hippocampi, and of course there appear to be differences in the brains of conservatives and liberals which track with their political psychology.
(http://penigma.blogspot.com/2011/01/its-all-in-your-head.html)

Birds and humans have some interesting factors in common in our language centers in the brain.
http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/060427/birds.shtml

Love your stuff, especially your visuals!
HL Says:
April 29, 2011 at 6:35 pm
Yeah, but city pigeons are still birdbrains…
Mike Licht Says:
April 29, 2011 at 7:52 pm
HL wrote: city pigeons are still birdbrains

But birdbrains with attitude.

I believe that is the definition of “hipster” …..
Mike Licht Says:
April 30, 2011 at 2:23 pm
UPDATE:

“Now there’s a scientific explanation for why Big Bird chooses to live in downtown Manhattan.” Sara Reardon, Science Now