How smart are birds?

[Angrboda]

A lot of empirical research into cognitive function of the brain has been done on mammals, so there is a tendency to correlate the thickness, area and infold convolutions of the cereberal cortex, which are entensive in humans, chimps and dolphins, with intelligence. This makes it surprising to many people that birds, with much smaller brains and minimal cerebral cortex, can also perform surprising amount of cognitive function.

The last episode of Nova delved into the question of bird intelligence. One of the things it pointed out is that "intelligence" in a species is generally characterized by the encephalization quotient, which is the ratio of brain size to body size. It pointed out that, relatively speaking, in terms of EQ, a crow is in the same ballpark as a chimpanzee, based on brain and body size.

PBS Nova: Inside Animal Minds - Bird Genius


I also came across the following while searching, but haven't watched it yet. It's a Nova ScienceNOW segment on bird intelligence.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/bird-brains.html