Hatch a Thief: Brains incline birds toward a life of crime

It’s not brawn but brains that matter in the rise of crime families among birds.

WATCH YOUR LUNCH. The golden eagle has a rap sheet of food thefts and belongs to a family with food-stealer traits: large brains for their body size plus a taste for open habitats and vertebrate prey. iStockphoto

That’s one of the conclusions from a study of traits shared by families of bird species notorious for stealing food, says Julie Morand-Ferron of the University of Québec in Montréal.