TOBIOJ The Open Biology Journal Open Bio. J. 1874-1967 Bentham Open TOBIOJ-1-6 10.2174/1874196700801010006 Biology Does 'Relationship Intelligence' Make Big Brains in Birds? Scheiber Isabella B.R. * Weiβ Brigitte M. Hirschenhauser Katharina Wascher Claudia A.F. Nedelcu Iulia T. Kotrschal Kurt Konrad Lorenz Forschungsstelle für Ethologie, A-4645 Grünau 11, Austria Address correspondence to this author at the Konrad Lorenz Forschungsstelle für Ethologie, Fischerau 11, 4645 Gruenau im Almtal, Austria; E-mail: klf.gruenau@telecom.at 27 02 2008 2008 1 6 8 19 10 2007 07 11 2007 14 11 2007 © 2008 Scheiber et al. 2008 Isabella B.R. Scheiber

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Lately, Emery et al. developed a bird-specific modification of the “social brain hypothesis”, termed “relationship intelligence hypothesis”. Although the idea may be valuable, we doubt that it is supported by sufficient evidence and critically discuss some of the arguments raised by the authors in favour of their new idea.