A Bird's IQ
Innovation, Intelligence, and Problem Solving in the Avian World
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- Pedido anticipado
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- Se espera: 12 may 2026
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- USD 14.99
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- Pedido anticipado
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- USD 14.99
Descripción editorial
“This book is a gem, witty, entertaining, insightful, and deeply informative—a must-read for anyone interested in birds or brains.” JENNIFER ACKERMAN, New York Times bestselling author of The Genius of Birds, What an Owl Knows, and The Bird Way
Discover the secret intelligence of birds, revealed by one of the world’s leading researchers in avian innovation.
Surveying a wide variety of birds, including crows, finches, tits, and parrots, Louis Lefebvre, a world-renowned expert in animal behavior, describes the remarkable innovations and problem-solving abilities of species often dismissed as “featherbrains.” From crows using cars as nutcrackers to cockatoos crafting tools, Lefebvre reveals how birds exhibit creativity, social learning, and even cultural transmission—traits once thought to be exclusive to humans and other primates.
Blending his decades of scientific research with engaging anecdotes, Lefebvre examines the evolutionary forces that have shaped avian intelligence. He explores how birds adapt to urban environments, innovate in response to challenges, and pass down knowledge across generations. This goldmine of bird behavior yields an “innovation quotient” (like our human IQ) widely used by researchers to measure and rank how innovative a bird species is. Using his encyclopedic knowledge, Lefebvre answers questions such as:
When a bird species learns a new technique, how do their innovations spread?Why is research on bird cognition being used to train AI models and even robots?What makes certain birds endlessly innovative while others stubbornly repeat the same behaviors?
With vivid storytelling and groundbreaking insights, A Bird’s IQ invites readers to reconsider their perceptions, celebrating the ingenuity of birds and highlighting the interconnectedness of all intelligent life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Biologist Lefebvre makes his English-language debut with an intriguing study of how birds learn, solve problems, and communicate. Drawing on his field work in Barbados, he demonstrates that birds are remarkably clever ("By evolutionary descent, we humans may be naked apes, but by virtue of our resilient, invasive, and opportunistic intelligence, we are also in many ways featherless crows"). Lefebvre shares how he and other researchers put together a database that ranks birds by their innovativeness. At the top of the list is the house sparrow; scientists have observed the species develop more than 50 techniques to acquire food, including flapping in front of sensors to trigger the opening of automatic doors so they can eat crumbs inside supermarkets. Another high scorer is the Eurasian collared dove, which has learned to steal food pellets fed to feral cats in parks in Catalan. Lefebvre also discusses the connection between bird intelligence and brain size. For example, peacocks, who have relatively small brains, attract a mate by showing off their spotted, fanned feathers, while bigger-brained lyrebirds and birds of paradise perform complex vocal imitations and dances "that make the peacock's strut look like child's play." Packed with enlightening case studies of avian ingenuity, this will make readers rethink the meaning of birdbrained. Photos.
