Is there a correlation between the intelligence a bird and how helpless it is when it hatches? Parrots are extremely smart birds, and their newly hatched babies are helpless and blind. I believe crow and raven hatchlings are equally helpless. Chickens have chicks that grow wing feathers at less than a week old, and they’re obviously less intelligent by far. Ducks and turkeys don’t get all their feathers quite so fast, but obviously a lot faster than a parrot.
I understand that being helpless at birth is called altricial and being more independent is precocial, but are there dumb altricial hatchlings and smart precocial hatchlings? The division doesn’t exist in mammals as both humans and rabbits (but not hares) are altricial.