A professor emeritus of biology at McGill College in Québec, Canada, Louis Lefebvre has constructed a database cataloguing the fascinating behaviour of virtually 1700 species of chook and greater than 4400 exceptional examples of their innovation, intelligence and problem-solving that fly within the face of the age-old “chook mind” insult. Mixing his encyclopaedic data of chook cognition with participating anecdotes about their ingenuity, this guide examines the evolutionary forces which have formed avian intelligence, together with city environments: from crows utilizing vehicles as nutcrackers to cockatoos crafting instruments. And, when a chook species learns a brand new method, how do their improvements unfold?
