The Genius of Birds cover art

The Genius of Birds

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for £5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Genius of Birds

By: Jennifer Ackerman
Narrated by: Patience Tomlinson
Try Standard free

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £14.81

Buy Now for £14.81

About this listen

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 Biological Sciences Birdwatching Nature & Ecology Outdoors & Nature Science
All stars
Most relevant
Interesting topic although sometimes very scientific and every male voice the narrator does doings like they are from Yorkshire Dales

Interesting

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A great book full of amazing information, slightly lacking flow at times. The book is ordered by measures of intellect and as such, felt disjointed as it jumps from one species to another, one continent to another and one example to another.

An interesting read, hard work at times

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I can't fault the content of this book, it's a very interesting listen with plenty of balanced discussions about a wide variety of birds and their cognitive abilities.

The one thing I struggled with was the length of each chapter; they could easily have been split into smaller chapters with overarching themes. It often feels like although sections of a chapter are related, it would be much easier to digest in smaller chunks.

For example, halfway through I decided to start listening to the book at 1.5x speed and the longest chapter still took an hour and a half! If you struggle to focus for long periods of time then perhaps this isn't the book for you.

On the other hand, if you're looking to expand your knowledge of our feathered friends then this book will scratch that itch, with loads of great information on all sorts of topics relating to intelligence in birds from an author who clearly has a passion for them.

An interesting listen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This book contains some interesting information but it falls short due to a) it not being categorised or organised - it's felt like one long shapeless narrative & b) most of the information comes from vivisection/animal experiments most of which are pretty unethical

Fair

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
It’s utterly fascinating but I have found her voice very hard to listen to, which has ruined the whole experience

Really hard to listen to her voice

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews