A provocative new study of birds, humans, and the deepest prejudices of Western science--developed from six years of independent research by a behavioral scientist. In the spirit of the New York Times bestseller The Hidden Life of Dogs. Color photos.
| |||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
In this provocative book about avian intelligence and communication--which are much more elaborate and deep than scientists once thought--behavioral scientist Theodore Xenophon Barber posits that birds share many qualities that humans have assumed are unique to themselves. Among these qualities, he says, are the ability to form abstract concepts, "to play with joy and mate erotically," and to adapt to a variety of situations. It is largely because avian knowledge is not carried across generations that their past thinking is lost, he continues, which leads people to assume that birds are thoughtless. With an eye to disarming critics of cognitive ethology, Barber reminds his readers that Charles Darwin reached similar conclusions. Whatever the case, bird lovers will find The Human Nature of Birds a fascinating curiosity.
From Publishers Weekly
Until recently, modern science has attributed animal behavior soley to instinct and genetic programming. Barber, director of the Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences, challenges that view. Six years of total immersion in avian studies have led him to conclude that birds are capable of thoughtful judgment and are intelligently aware. He examines their flexibility and resilience, compares bird and human instincts and discusses avian navigation. Barbar says that birds are capable of close relationships with humans, citing as examples the cases of Arnie the starling, Lorenzo the bluejay, Alex, an African gray parrot. He believes it is likely that like birds, all animals are intelligently aware. This book is didactic in manner, provocative in content. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Funny. Not funny haha funny, but eerily accurate funny.,
By Earl Dennis (San Francisco, California United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Human Nature of Birds: A Scientific Discovery with Startling Implications (Mass Market Paperback)
I could almost hear the sniggers after reading this book and was not surpised to find the lead review here disclaiming this work as 'simplistic.' Actually, biology is simplistic. Mammals are evolved from a recent common ancestor and built around a pretty homogenious genetic bluprint. Biotech is taking advantage of this simple fact; a company in California has engineered a lab mouse possessing the entire human immune system: humans and mice are simply that closely related functionally and genetically. Birds are not mammals, but they are vertebrates. The brainiest vertebrates besides mammals in fact. Some of the more highly developed birds (parrots) indeed possess more neural and cognitve fire power than the least developed mammals (small shrews). This book is important in that it challenges some long held false dogmas of standard biology going back to the dark ages, namely that humans and animals are distinct. Reality check: humans ARE animals. By and large mammals are variations on an homologous theme. Birds, being vertebrates, are highly analogous with, if not homologous in that they are vertebrates with mammals, which are, you guessed it, vertebrates; mammals and birds, two very brainy vertebrates. What does it mean to be a brainy vertebrate? The dogma Dr. Barber imposes on here is that to anthropomorphize is a scientific sin. To anthropomorphize is to assume that one brainy vertebrate could possibly have similar cognitive and emotional experiences as another. Mammals have large brains and can cognize, birds have large brains and can cognize. This isn't an oversimplifying anthropomorphization, it's a fact, it's the scientific identification of a universal. Not only do mammals as a class possess practically identical adreno/hypothalamic hormones and neuropeptides (what defines soul? ask an endocrinologist), but so does the lowly vertebrate the hagfish. No one said it better than the cantankerous genious Schopenhauer, "No one who himself has any intelligence will doubt its existence in the higher animals." After perusing the experimental evidence of the likes of Dr. Pepperberg's Alex, one can hardly doubt the higher intelligence of birds as rivals in neural processing capacity with mammals in the phylum chordata. Let's face it people, intelligence is a function of brains and birds have some significant gray matter relative to the animal kingdom at large. Biologically in fact we may anthropomorphize over the common terms of the subphylum vertebrata and that consciousness derives from brains. Facts long eschewed by anthropocentric metaphysicians, but long overdue in biology as a science. Kudos to Dr. Barber for his bold illumination of these simple biological facts. A helpful reference work for those pursuing cognitition as a hard science.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not just for bird lovers - a fascinating read!,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Human Nature of Birds: A Scientific Discovery with Startling Implications (Mass Market Paperback)
Love, joy, rage, friendship, pain, passion, subterfuge, loyalty, tragedy, and heroics ...invisible to us, and in every tree! This astonishing and readable book is a jolt - the high speed lives of birds are more complex, fascinating, and human than we thought. A terrific lay science book which will hook even non-bird lovers. Despite some repetition of the author's soap box views on ecology, this book sustains interest with a mix of terrific anecdotes, science and philosophy. Highly recommended.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Challenge to Traditional Science,
By A Customer
This review is from: Human Nature of Birds: A Scientific Discovery with Startling Implications (Mass Market Paperback)
Though he describes himself as a scientist and this book as a scientific endeavor, Theodore Xenophon Barber is a polemicist. He rejects traditional scientifc methods and attitudes in order to prove that birds have levels of intelligence and individuality which mainstream science denies them. His book is impassioned, fascinating, readable, elaborately documented, persuasive, and thought-provoking; but it is also unscientific in any traditional sense.This is not to say Barber is wrong. The rules of traditional science make it extremely difficult for a mainstream ornithologist to transcend the notion that birds are feathered automata, incapable of thought, and certainly unable to understand language, relate emotionally to people or to other birds, make intelligent decisions, or modify behavior based on experience. Yet Barber, by ignoring the rule against anthropomorphism (attributing human emotions and motives to non-human creatures) and the rejection of anecdotal data, makes a very convincing case that birds are capable of all those things and much more besides. Barber is not the first to suggest such heresies. Many years ago, Konrad Lorenz, in his wonderful book King Solomon's Ring, offered many examples of very human-like behavior in the birds he observed. Other researchers quoted by Barber have reluctantly concluded that pure automatic instinct cannot explain all the avian behavior they observed. Barber's case is greatly strenghtened by his analysis of instincts in birds and in humans. He suggests that human beings have as many instincts and as much instinctual behavior as do birds; we simply fail to recognize it as such because acting on instinct is rarely automatic; it requires thought, planning, and experiment. For example, it is instinctive for humans to speak; all babies babble (even deaf ones) and from the welter of sounds they produce learn to repeat and organize the ones their language uses. Yet we do not say that children learn language automatically; we credit them with intelligence as they learn to channel their instinctive actions and use the language instinct in an intelligent way. In the same way, Barber argues, birds have an instinct to claim and defend territories, build nests, attract mates, and raise young; but every one of these activities must be learned and practiced before it is mastered. In support of Barber's claim, it is generally recognized that experienced bird parents raise to maturity a higher percentage of their chicks than do beginning avian parents. If their behavior were purely automatic, it would be mindlessly repeated year after year and there would be no improvement in chick-rearing ability. Barber's objective is to persuade the reader that birds are thinking, feeling, individualistic living things, and that they deserve to be treated with respect for that reason. He has written a most thought-provoking work, one which is almost impossible to dismiss. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the kinship of living things.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
