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Bird Brain

The Incredible Intelligence of Crows, and What This Tells Us About Ourselves

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Bird Brain

By: Andreas Nieder
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What if one of the most intelligent minds on Earth could fly?

Crows and ravens can solve multi-step puzzles, use and shape tools, remember human faces for years, and plan ahead. In this groundbreaking new book, Neuroscientist Andreas Nieder reveals how these birds think, and why their intelligence is reshaping what science believes about the mind.

At the centre of Bird Brain is Edgar, a crow raised in Nieder’s lab at the University of Tübingen. As Edgar grows from chick to adult, his abilities — learning, counting, decision-making — offer a rare, inside look at the cognitive world of corvids.

Crows don’t have a human-like brain. So how does Edgar do it? Nieder’s research shows that a different brain structure, the pallium, can produce surprisingly advanced forms of thought, challenging long-held ideas about intelligence and consciousness.

Smart, surprising, and deeply thought-provoking, Bird Brain will alter how you see all animals — and challenge how you understand us.

© Andreas Nieder 2027 (P) Penguin Audio 2027

 Animals Biological Sciences Outdoors & Nature Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Science
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Critic reviews

Bird Brain is a revelation, an outstanding work of popular science authored by a leading scientist who can flat-out write. It is the memoir of a crow named Edgar, written by the researcher who raised, nurtured, and studied him: Andreas Nieder, one of the world’s foremost neuroscientists. In personal and touching prose, Nieder recounts what Edgar taught him: that birds are smart and solve problems, and that crows can do things that were once thought to be limited to humans and our closest mammal kin, like count and make tools. This book proves that the old insult of being called a ‘birdbrain’ is actually a compliment, and in doing so, illuminates how intelligence in nature can take many forms. (Steve Brusatte, University of Edinburgh palaeontologist and Sunday Times/New York Times bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs and The Story of Birds)
Edgar, the star of Bird Brain, changed my mind about what birds can know. This crow can count, find hidden food, remember his enemies, and show kinds of cognition once thought exclusive to humans. Esteemed neuroscientist Andreas Nieder also explores avian abilities in birds around the globe, giving us new insights into exactly what intelligence means and in the process deepened my understanding of how I think. (Joan Strassmann, author of Slow Birding and The Social Lives of Birds)
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