Dun get offended when i call u a birdbrain...it's a compliment!!!!

ST Feb 2, 2005
You call me a birdbrain? Thank you!
WASHINGTON - BIRDS are not stupid and their brains are not primitive, so it is about time the scientific world gave them full credit, experts said.

An international group of experts yesterday published a call for scientists around the world to switch to a new set of words to describe the various parts of the avian brain. It would be a wholesale revision of terms that is rarely seen in science and the first total makeover of bird-brain anatomy in more than a century.

The current system suggests a bird's brain is mostly basal ganglia and that this area controls primitive brain function and instinctive behaviour.

In fact, neither is true. The bird brain more closely resembles the human brain and the basal ganglia is not a primitive region, said Duke University's Mr Erich Jarvis, who led the study.

'Stop calling people birdbrains meaning stupid. Take it as a compliment,' he said.

The neurobiologist, who studies how birds learn vocalisations such as songbird songs and imitated speech in parrots, said their behaviour can be surprisingly complex.

They can use tools and songs, imitate human language to communicate and count.

'They can lie. You can teach a pigeon to do something that will have another pigeon get food for a reward. You can find a female pigeon that will pretend a reward for food is coming and then she eats it instead of her mate,' he said.

He said some birds had evolved cognitive abilities that are far more complex than in many mammals.

'We should be able to get more insight into how the human brain works, too,' he said.

For instance, 'primitive' regions of avian brains are sophisticated processing regions similar to those in mammals, the researchers said.

'There is strong interest across neuroscience in using birds as models for learning and development, and migratory and social behaviour.'

The researchers published their argument in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience. \-- REUTERS