Jennifer Ackerman's "The Genius of Birds: Unlocking the Mysteries of Avian Intelligence"

LynnG: It's no wonder I have always loved watching birds. Amazing to know so much of what I marveled over was deliberate. They are amazing creatures, and I love that they are creative solution finders.

United States on Aug 05, 2023

David: Incredible information on a bird's intelligence. Sometimes you read a book and even though it might be fun it tells you little.

This is researched by a life long expert on birds with lots and lots of research notes. Because of her absolute love of birds this makes this book priceless.

She presents her notes on her research; However, for the many that just want to be entertain, this book might not be for them.

Her research on birds gives us a much wider appreciation and facination for their intellengence to perform task we humans couldn't even imagine doing. This book is an eye opener to our marvelous friends that occupy everywhere.

United States on Apr 25, 2023

Len: Great introduction into the way birds think and the complicated problems some can solve. They each have a kind of genius to solve the problems on which their survival depends.

Canada on Jan 11, 2023

Robert Rayce: I liked it for its factual and eminently readable style.

Germany on Aug 16, 2022

Clara: Very easy to read and very informative. I helps you understand the amazing capabilities of birds despite having a brain structure completely different to ours. Must read for animal and bird lovers.

United Kingdom on Apr 17, 2022

Christian D. Orr: Both the book’s catchy title and the actual text go a long way in challenging a long-standing paradigm and assumptions about birds’ supposed lack on intelligence.

Regarding that paradigm, I remember back when I was a wee-bitty kid in the early 1980s, I had a set of World Book Encyclopaedias from circa 1947, and of the articles therein ranked The 10 Most Intelligent Animals in the World. The chimpanzee topped the list, followed by several other primates, the cat and dog, the pig, the elephant, and the horse rounding out the bottom of the list. Regarding “talking” birds like parrots, cockatoos, mynahs, etc, the article stated that that while these speaking abilities may seem at first to indicate intelligence, the author(s) went on to dismiss this avian skill as mere mimicry, asserting that “their intelligence is far less than [the mammals listed in the Top 10].”

Hmmm, I wonder what the author(s) of that World Book article would say about “The Genius of Birds” if they were still alive today.

This book is chockfull of fascinating facts, figures, anecdotes, and hypotheses. Indeed, one of the reasons it took me so goshdarn long to finally finish...

United States on Jan 03, 2022

CauãCauã: It’s amazing to see how birds may be responsible to the emotional needs of others, like the example of the ravens that console others that had been in a fight. Some kind of birds are known to have empathy.
They have social structures, they can imagine another bird’s point of view to make strategics for pilfering or caching food. Some birds are artists, like the bowerbird. They just do it to impressive females.
It’s impressive to know how they can remember the place of thousands of seeds they buried, they have mental maps that helps them do remember this places and to travel long distances with so much accuracy. The Nicole Blaser experiment (home loft and food loft, page 215) was astonishing. She showed that pigeons are capable of making choices between targets according to motivation, a cognitive ability, and they have a genuine cognitive map in their heads.
It was amazing to read the study that suggests their ability to perceive a hurricane so far away, due to their capability to sense strong low frequency infrasound.
The book is very easy to read, even if you are not specialist. The author brings a lot of scientific material. Great read.

Brazil on Sep 07, 2021

Jammer JennJammer Jenn: This is a wonderful book for the bird lover full of interesting facts and fun anecdotes. The perfect gift for myself! Highly recommend. The Penguin format is comfortable. I would prefer a higher grade of paper, but this is typical for a Panguin paperback. I may have wished to see if hardcover used better grade paper. Type font easy to read. Black and white sketches for illustrations.

Canada on Mar 03, 2021

Phil Porter: Birds are as common as grass but most humans give them no more consideration than the grass under their feet! Man always puts his species at the top of the heap when it comes to intelligence but few ever stop to think that a lot of species evolved on parallel paths with humans.

When I was about ten years old, I visited some my grand mothers relatives, in a fairly remote area, near Jackson, Tennessee. One of grannies sisters had a crow. This crow was very special in that it was stealing her eggs. She knew the crow was stealing the eggs but could never catch it red handed. One day shortly before we arrived, the sister heard a hen start cackling had looked out the window just in time to see the grow carrying an egg shell out of the hen house. She watched it carry the shell around the hen house but could not determine where the crow deposited the egg shell. Finally she found an old wash tub turned upside down with a hole in the bottom. She turned the tub over and found dozens of egg shells! The crow was dropping the shells in the hole in the tub. She was going to dispatch the crow but my brother and I talked her into giving the crow to us.

We returned to North Little...

United States on Sep 08, 2016