VISIT the Australian National Botanic Gardens in Canberra and you may stumble upon an odd sight: a human figure, festooned with futuristic monitoring gear. When children poke it - which happens a lot - the statue blinks. Meet Jessica McLachlan, a researcher at Australian National University who is hard at work studying the fine, never-before-detected details of bird behaviour. The gear she wears is what it takes to observe the world as birds themselves see it. Bird brains are miracles of miniaturisation. Their neurons are smaller and more densely packed than ours, and differ architecturally too, creating a network of close connections. As a result, bird brains operate more quickly than ours.
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