For decades, both scientists and everyday people have assumed that birds are not very intelligent. It was a scientific theory so accepted that it has become a part of everyday language as in a “bird-brained scheme.”

But a new group of researchers is turning the common understanding of the bird brain on its ear. The Avian Brain Nomenclature Consortium has published an article in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience that challenges the common view that birds have less intellectual prowess than mammals.

In this radio diary, Duke University neuroscientist Erich Jarvis shows some of the ways that birds are, in fact, more cerebral than many mammals.

Guests:

Erich Jarvis is a neuroscientist at Duke University and a leader of the Avian Brain Nomenclature Consortium. The group’s article on rethinking the bird brain appears in the February issue of the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience.