You may have more in common with a pigeon than you realise,
according to new research.
It shows that humans and birds have brains that are wired in
a similar way.
A researcher from Imperial College London and his colleagues
have developed for the first time a map of a typical bird brain, showing how
different regions are connected together to process information. By comparing
it to brain diagrams for different mammals such as humans, the team discovered
that areas important for high-level cognition such as long-term memory and
problem solving are wired up to other regions of the brain in a similar way.
This is despite the fact that both mammal and bird brains have been evolving
down separate paths over hundreds of millions of years.