Weathering climate change may be easier for birds with big brains

Enlarge / Could this guy's mental abilities be staving off some of the impact of climate change? (credit: Andrew Howe)

Many bird species are slowly but surely getting smaller. One study from 2019 looked at more than 70,000 North American migratory birds across 52 species that met untimely ends by flying into Chicago buildings from 1978 to 2016. It suggests that birds in this diverse set had consistently grown smaller as the summers had grown hotter through climate change over the past 40 years.

While this shrinking was observed across these migratory species, new research suggests that birds with bigger brains-relative to their body size-aren't shrinking like their smaller-brained kin. The research posits that birds like corvids may be better able to survive climate change simply because they are "smarter" in some sense.

Justin Baldwin, a PhD candidate at Washington University and one of the authors of the paper, said that brain size isn't always a useful proxy for intelligence. But-and we're not sure why-it does appear to hold true for many birds. The birds with big brains are basically the ones that build tools, live in complex social groups, live and remain in harsh environments, live longer, [put] more time and energy into raising babies, and [survive] better in the wild," he told Ars.

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