The Genius of Birds

By: Jennifer Ackerman

Narrated by: Patience Tomlinson

In The Genius of Birds, acclaimed author Jennifer Ackerman explores the newly discovered brilliance of birds and how it came about.

Consider, as Ackerman does, the Clark's nutcracker, a bird that can hide as many as 30,000 seeds over dozens of square miles and remember where it put them several months later; the mockingbirds and thrashers, species that can store 200 to 2,000 different songs in a brain a thousand times smaller than ours; the well-known pigeon, which knows where it's going, even thousands of miles from familiar territory; and the New Caledonian crow, an impressive bird that makes its own tools.

This elegant scientific investigation and travelogue weaves personal anecdotes with fascinating science.

©2016 Jennifer Ackerman (P)2016 Isis Publishing Ltd