Entities › Animals and other organisms › Birds
African grey parrot
Psittacus erithacus
About 1.6 billion neurons. Decades of laboratory study of numerosity and categorisation.
- Neurons
- 1.57 billion measured · whole brain (isotropic fractionator)Olkowicz S et al. (2016). Birds have primate-like numbers of neurons in the forebrain. PNAS 113:7255-7260. doi:10.1073/pnas.1517131113.
- In the cerebral cortex (or bird pallium)
- about 850 million (pallium, derived from telencephalon counts)Olkowicz S et al. (2016). Birds have primate-like numbers of neurons in the forebrain. PNAS 113:7255-7260. doi:10.1073/pnas.1517131113.
Evidence
- Long-term lab studies of numerical and categorical concepts in a grey parrot.Pepperberg IM (1999) The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey Parrots. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. doi:10.4159/9780674041998.
The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness (2024) finds strong scientific support for conscious experience in mammals and birds.