Today's selection --
from Birdology by Sy Montgomery.
Birds, which are more different from us than any other class of
creatures we commonly see, can see polarized and ultraviolet light,
experience colors we can never know, sense the earth's magnetic field,
and navigate using subtle changes in odor and barometric pressure:
"Birds
are the only wild animals most people see every day. No matter where we
live, birds live with us. Too many of us take them for granted. We
don't appreciate how very strange they are, how different. We don't
realize what otherworldly creatures birds are. Their hearts look like
those of crocodiles. Birds are covered with modified scales -- we call
them feathers. Their bones are hollow, permeated with extensive air
sacs. They have no hands. They give birth to eggs.
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"No other scientific classification of living creature we commonly
see is so different from us as is the class Aves. We don't even think of
birds as 'animals' (although they are -- as are humans, of course). We
consider 'animals' to be our fellow mammals, with whom our kinship is
obvious. ... We shared a common ancestor with even the most distant of
our fellow placental mammals as recently as 100 million years ago. The
last ancestor we shared with the birds, however, traces back 325 to 350
million years ago.
"A bird is as distant from us as a dinosaur. But unlike the
extinct monsters of the Jurassic and Cretaceous, birds today are
everywhere among us -- on our sidewalks, at our bird feeders, on our
dinner plates. Yet despite our disparate evolutionary paths, scientists
are now beginning to reveal the extent to which birds' emotional and
intellectual abilities are remarkably like ours. ...
"[T]he
first thing you need to know about birds is that Birds Are Individuals.
... Although a flock of hens is all about community, each chicken is
quite distinctive, and the personality of each individual is extremely
important to the flock dynamic. People who don't know chickens are
always astonished to learn this, but when you are in the company of
birds, you must be prepared to be surprised.
"A second
fundamental truth of birds is that Birds Are Dinosaurs. That may be
difficult to see when you're watching a fluffy chickadee at the feeder,
but it is abundantly clear when you are crashing through the rain forest
of Queensland, Australia, pursuing a 150-pound cassowary, a bird as
tall as a man, crowned with a helmet of bone on its head and a killer
claw on each foot. ... The dinosaurian lineage that became the birds
left the earth for the skies. And in doing this, they utterly reshaped
their bodies inside and out. ... Their bones are hollow; their feathers
weigh more than the skeleton. Their bodies are full of air sacs; their
feathers, also hollow shafted, are sculpted to capture and move air.
Birds are essentially feather-fringed bubbles. ...
"Birds
are able to apprehend the world in ways that we cannot. They can see
polarized and ultraviolet light. They experience colors we can never
know. They sense the earth's magnetic field, navigate using subtle
changes in odor and barometric pressure. They imbibe realities of this
world that we cannot fathom and use them to circumnavigate the globe. We
are only now starting to understand how birds accomplish these
extraordinary feats, by way of one of our most ordinary and
unappreciated birds, the pigeon. ...
"Though gifted with
instincts and senses that we lack, birds' intellectual capacities are
shockingly similar to our own. Some birds appreciate human art to the
extent that they can learn to tell the difference between the paintings
of Monet and those of Manet. Some birds love to dance. ... Birds'
capacity for song is of course so legendary that many cultures tell us
the birds taught music to humans. There are birds who can even speak to
us meaningfully in our own language -- something that, many scientists
believe, even our close hominid cousins, the Neanderthals, probably
could not do."
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Birdology:
Adventures with Hip Hop Parrots, Cantankerous Cassowaries, Crabby
Crows, Peripatetic Pigeons, Hens, Hawks, and Hummingbirds
Author: Sy Montgomery
Publisher: Free Press a division of Simon and Schuster
Copyright 2010 by Sy Montgomery
Pages: 3-5
If you wish to read further: Buy Now
Sy Montgomery's Birdology and The Soul of an Octopus made our list of "Best Books We Read this Year." Read the full list here:
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