BIRD BRAINS BEAT HUMAN BRAINS
Bird brains are better than human brains in at least one way: Birds are better at multitasking.
A new study found that pigeons are capable of switching between two tasks more quickly than humans, despite the fact that birds have smaller brains and lack a cortex. Rather, this fact might be the cause of the advantage.
The study, conducted by Dr Sara Letzner and Prof Dr Dr h. c. Onur Güntürkün, from Ruhr-Universität Bochum, was published in the journal "Current Biology" in collaboration with Prof Dr Christian Beste from the University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus at Technische Universität Dresden.
While the mammalian cerebral cortex was commonly thought to be the anatomical cause of cognitive ability, with its sophisticated 6 cortical layers, Letzner and her team now hypothesize that because bird brains are so small and simply structured, their neurons are more densely packed than human neurons, and so, nerve cell signals have shorter distances to travel and information is processed more quickly.
Pigeons, for example, have 6 times as many nerve cells as humans per cubic millimetre of brain. That means that the average distance between two neurons in pigeons is 50% shorter than in humans and information is processed that much faster.
The researchers tested this hypothesis using a multitasking exercise that was performed by 15 humans and 12 pigeons. Both the human and pigeon participants had to stop a task in progress and switch over to an alternative task as quickly as possible. Pigeons were 250 milliseconds faster than humans.
While that is only a tiny advantage, on one level, it has massive significance. It may shed light on the question of how some birds, such as crows or parrots, are smart enough to rival chimpanzees in terms of cognitive abilities, despite their small brains and their lack of a cortex.
Letzner and fellow study scientists propose that It could be precisely because of their small brains, densely packed with nerve cells, that birds are able to reduce the processing time in tasks that require rapid interaction between different groups of neurons.
Read more about Beautiful Birds in Go to Bird Heaven: Kenya, Birds Make Your Life More Beautiful Now, Good Good Good Migrations and Beautiful Birds Of A Different Feather: Joel Sartore.
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