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Brains of an emu, a kiwi, a barn owl, and a pigeon, with visual processing areas labelled. The avian brain is the central organ of the nervous system in birds. Birds possess large, complex brains, which process, integrate, and coordinate information received from the environment and make decisions on how to respond with the rest of the body.
The difficulty of defining or measuring intelligence in non-human animals makes the subject difficult to study scientifically in birds. In general, birds have relatively large brains compared to their head size. Furthermore, bird brains have two-to-four times the neuron packing density of mammal brains, for higher overall efficiency. The visual ...
Brain–body mass relationship for mammals [dubious – discuss]. Brain–body mass ratio, also known as the brain–body weight ratio, is the ratio of brain mass to body mass, which is hypothesized to be a rough estimate of the intelligence of an animal, although fairly inaccurate in many cases.
Bird cell size is on the other hand generally smaller than that of mammals, which may mean more brain cells and hence synapses per volume, allowing for more complex behaviour from a smaller brain. [4] Both bird intelligence and brain anatomy are however very different from those of mammals, making direct comparison difficult. [25]
By Will Dunham (Reuters) - The brains of today's birds facilitate a level of cognitive prowess and behavioral complexity rivaled only by mammals.
Not all animals have neurons; Trichoplax and sponges lack nerve cells altogether. Neurons may be packed to form structures such as the brain of vertebrates or the neural ganglions of insects. The number of neurons and their relative abundance in different parts of the brain is a determinant of neural function and, consequently, of behavior.
The fossil filled a 70-million-year gap in the understanding of how the brains of birds evolved: between the 150-million-year-old Archaeopteryx, the earliest known bird-like dinosaur, and birds ...
The bird brain is divided into a number of sections, each with a different function. The cerebrum or telencephalon is divided into two hemispheres , and controls higher functions. The telencephalon is dominated by a large pallium , which corresponds to the mammalian cerebral cortex and is responsible for the cognitive functions of birds.