Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds (Paperback)

by Bernd Heinrich (Author) "THE FIRST PREREQUISITE TO STUDYing any animal is to get and to stay close..." (more)
Key Phrases: rasping alarm calls, knocking display, most dominant bird, Hills Pond, New England, Yellowstone Park (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Beyond croaking, "Nevermore," what exactly do ravens do all day? Bernd Heinrich, biology professor at the University of Vermont and author of Ravens in Winter, has spent more than a decade learning the secrets of these giants of the crow family. He has observed startlingly complex activities among ravens, including strong pair-bonding, use of tools, elaborate vocal communication, and even play. Ravens are just plain smart, and we can see much of ourselves in their behavior. They seem to be affectionate, cranky, joyful, greedy, and competitive, just like us. And in Mind of the Raven, Heinrich makes no bones about attributing emotions and intellect to Corvus corax--just not the kind we humans can understand. He mostly catalogs their behaviors in the manner of a respectful anthropologist, although a few moments of proud papa show through when he describes the pet ravens he hand-raised to adulthood.

Heinrich spends hundreds of loving hours feeding roadkill fragments to endlessly hungry raven chicks, and cold days in blinds watching wild ravens squabble and frolic. He is a passionate fan of his "wolf-birds," a name he gave them when he made the central discovery of the book: that ravens in Yellowstone National Park are dependent on wolves to kill for them. Mind of the Raven offers inspiring insight into both the lives of ravens and the mind of a truly gifted scientist. --Therese Littleton --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
In a book that demonstrates the rewards of caring and careful observation of the natural world, Heinrich (Ravens in Winter, etc.), a noted biologist, Guggenheim fellow and National Book Award nominee (for Bumblebee Economics, 1979), explores the question of raven intelligence through observation, experiment and personal experience. Although he has raised many ravens through the years (beginning with a tame pair that shared his apartment at UCLA in the 1960s), Heinrich focuses much of his attention on four nestlings he adopted from the Maine woods near his home. As he describes tending to the demanding babies, chopping up roadkill, cleaning up after them and enduring their noisy calls for food, readers will marvel at how much Heinrich knows and at how much joy he derives from acquiring that knowledge. As the birds mature, Heinrich details how these and other ravens feed, nest, mate, play and establish a society with clear hierarchical levels. At its best, his writing is distinguished by infectious enthusiasm, a lighthearted style and often lyrical descriptions of the natural world. His powers of observation are impressive and his descriptionsAof how a raven puffs its feathers in a dominance display, of how a female calls for food from her mate, of the pecking order at a carcassAare formidably precise. Toward the end of the book, Heinrich addresses the question implied by the title: To what degree can ravens be said to think? His answer: "I suspect that the great gulf or discontinuity that exists between us and all other animals is... ultimately less a matter of consciousness than of culture." Illustrations.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (April 4, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060930632
• ISBN-13: 978-0060930639
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #302,569 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing Investigations into the Lives and Minds of Ravens, March 22, 2004

By	mirasreviews (McLean, VA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

In "Mind of the Raven", biologist Bernd Heinrich delves into the behavior of ravens as individuals who might have a conscious choice, as opposed to taking a strictly behavioral ecologist perspective of those behaviors as being simply the results of evolutionary necessity. Heinrich strives to share the insight into the world of ravens which he gained over the course of nearly a decade of studying and interacting with ravens, both wild and captive, at his Vermont and Maine homes. "Mind of the Raven" isn't confined to the birds' intelligence or consciousness, although chapters on these fascinating and controversial subjects are included. The "mind" of the book's title encompasses all behavior and experience in these birds' lives. Heinrich details innumerable observations and experiments which he conducted on the subjects of raven feeding and educating their young, cooperation, hunting, adoption, dominance, sensory perception, individual recognition, communication, fears, interaction with other animals, caching, deception, play, intelligence, and emotions. Heinrich seems to possess an insatiable -and infectious- curiosity about these magnificent birds, which is demonstrated in his exhausting and endlessly inventive experiments. Heinrich's studies are as controlled and straightforward as possible. And although they sometimes raise more questions than they answer, they never fail to entertain or to impress the reader with the complexity and variety of raven personalities. It's nice to read a book by a scientist who has such an enthusiasm for his field of study, as well as genuine affection for his subjects. "Mind of the Raven" is a very readable broad account of the lives and minds of these large, clever corvids that have so populated human folklore and experience for thousands of years. I recommend it to any bird-lover, and those who have occasion to observe ravens will find Bernd Heinrich's insights especially interesting.

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Idiosyncratic, charming, thought-provoking and informative, October 11, 2004

By	Arthur Digbee (Indianapolis, IN, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This book is a wealth of information about ravens. While most of other books are set in Maine, here Heinrich travels farther afield to discuss ravens in the Arctic, Yellowstone, a pet raven in Germany, and elsewhere -- in addition to his own wild and tame ravens in Maine.

I can imagine some scientists (and others) being annoyed by Heinrich's style. His research questions are guided by his own natural curiosity and not by what the scientific community defines as important. He isn't trained as an ornithologist. Heinrich clearly depends on his own observations and does not like to delegate -- so his methods are not those of a scientist running a lab or something like a lab. For most of us, though, these "faults" make him all the more interesting. He is certainly high on the list of authors I'd like to invite to dinner.

Heinrich also seems to be a born teacher. He does a great job explaining ravens as well as explaining the process of discovery that brings him to his conclusions.

If you think that a bird can't possibly be conscious (or self-conscious), that a bird can't be intelligent, and that a bird can't have a real personality, this book will drive you nuts. If you think any of those things are *possible*, Heinrich gives you some thought-provoking stories about ravens.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gotta love this raving naturalist, November 3, 2004

By	Matt Hetling "Matt" (Bethel, ME USA) - See all my reviews

Bernd applies his multi-faceted brand of research to a species that is clearly close to his heart (the raven), with spectacular results. He weaves anecdotes and scientific studies together flawlessly to draw conclusions that are hard to argue with, if only because he refuses to draw unwarranted conclusions when the evidence isn't clear. He personally studies ravens in his northeastern home area, in Alaska, and in Germany to note the differences between different populations of the animal. He also draws extensively on his observations from his own aviary, where it seems he is at times obsessively painstaking in recording nuances of behavior that would fly over the heads of the average bird owner.

The Good and the Bad:
This book has been done right, with a real attempt to keep the reader's interest without compromising the scientific value of the work. The information given is enough to be compelling without being too boring about statistics. The end of the book gets a little more tilted towards hard science, with a fairly in-depth discussion about what warrants consciousness and intelligence, but there's no other conclusion that would be appropriate.

On the bad side, there are very occasional forays into self-indulgence, as when he takes the opportunity to argue the comments of a peer reviewer who contributed to the rejection of the publication of his study, or when a not-so-funny joke is recounted.

What I learned:
The raven is a remarkable animal, and consciousness evolves for as much of a specific reason as anything else. One bird might be given all of the instinct necessary to operate within a very narrow range of activity, but shorted on additional brain tissue, which is costly to maintain. But the raven has evolved to develop food gathering skills through problem-solving, which allows it to be much more flexible in its approach to food gathering, social interactions, and defense. This hardwired ability to solve problems manifests itself as curiosity, a desire to play, and the ability to visualize consequences without actually performing the action; this last is the most compelling criterion for awareness.

Other interesting raven facts: They can count to as high as seven. They hunt items ranging from ground squirrels to baby seals, but subsist mostly on the carrion provided by bigger predators. They lack the physical ability to pierce skin, and so have to eat through natural body openings or wounds. They have a collaborative relationship with other predators, generally wolves, which results in the ravens possibly directing the wolves to a kill so that they can take their share. This has a strange effect where they're actually uncomfortable eating from a carcass that lacks a predator as a feeding partner. This relationship has been transferred to other species where wolves are scarce, ranging from human hunters to polar bears to, possibly, a cougar, which seemed to be led to a human by a raven hoping to feast on the aftermath of a human kill. The problem-solving abilities were best demonstrated by the fact that a raven, when confronted with a piece of meat dangling from a string, will pull the string up by degrees so that it can reach the meat.