Birds, which are more different
from us than any other class of creatures we commonly see, can see
polarized and ultraviolet light, can experience colors we can never
know, can sense the earth's magnetic field, and can 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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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
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