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Bird Sense

What It's Like to Be a Bird

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
What is it like to be a swift, flying at over one hundred kilometres an hour? Or a kiwi, plodding flightlessly among the humid undergrowth in the pitch dark of a New Zealand night? And what is going on inside the head of a nightingale as it sings, and how does its brain improvise?
Bird Sense addresses questions like these and many more, by describing the senses of birds that enable them to interpret their environment and to interact with each other. Our affinity for birds is often said to be the result of shared senses—vision and hearing—but how exactly do their senses compare with our own? And what about a bird's sense of taste, or smell, or touch, or the ability to detect the earth's magnetic field? Or the extraordinary ability of desert birds to detect rain hundreds of kilometres away—how do they do it?
Bird Sense is based on a conviction that we have consistently underestimated what goes on in a bird's head. Our understanding of bird behaviour is simultaneously informed and constrained by the way we watch and study them. By drawing attention to the way these frameworks both facilitate and inhibit discovery, Birkhead identifies ways we can escape from them to explore new horizons in bird behaviour.
There has never been a popular book about the senses of birds. No one has previously looked at how birds interpret the world or the way the behaviour of birds is shaped by all their senses. A lifetime spent studying birds has provided Tim Birkhead with a wealth of observation and a unique understanding of birds and their behaviour that is firmly grounded in science.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 12, 2012
      With clear gusto for his subject, animal behavior expert Birkhead (The Wisdom of Birds) breaks down what it might be like to see, hear, touch, taste, and smell as a bird. Tracing the insights, clever experiments, and surprise contributions that have helped debunk myths about birds’ senses, he takes us to Caripe, Venezuela, where a Harvard undergrad discovered that the cave-dwelling guácharo can navigate in total darkness via echolocation, and introduces us to Betsy Bang, the amateur ornithologist who persuaded the scientific community in the 1960s that birds can smell. After walking us through the five familiar senses that birds share with humans, he also shows how they may be able to orient themselves by the earth’s magnetic field using magnetite crystals within their beaks or even by seeing the field, the way we might a cloud or a tree. And he considers less tangible feelings, too. Although little is known about birds’ emotions, Birkhead makes reasonable behavior-based guesses about what a bird might feel when glimpsing a predator, losing a skirmish with a rival, or reuniting with a mate. The well-organized book takes pains to explain any avian jargon, making for an uncomplicated, entertaining read perfect for birdwatchers and animal enthusiasts. Agent: Felicity Bryan, Felicity Bryan Associates (U.K.).

    • Kirkus

      March 1, 2012
      Birkhead (Animal Behavior and the History of Science/Univ. of Sheffield; The Wisdom of Birds: An Illustrated History of Ornithology, 2008, etc.) looks at the adaptive significance of bird behavior. A lifetime spent in ornithological research and old-fashioned bird-watching has convinced the author that "we have consistently underestimated what goes on in a bird's head." He describes how using the latest available tools, neurobiologists have uncovered new aspects of bird perception--e.g., the fact that female birds that see in the ultraviolet range chose mates on the basis of characteristics we can't directly perceive such as plumage markings. Even more fascinating, Birkhead explains that some birds "tend to use their right eye for close-up activities like feeding and the left eye for more distant activities such as scanning for predators." Another unexpected discovery which he hopes may prove relevant to the treatment of neuro-degenerative brain disease in humans is the plasticity of the brains of birds that live in temperate regions. As the days shorten with the approach of winter, the birds' brains shrink; conversely, increasing daylight triggers a hormone release resulting in an increase in brain size. This is correlated to the great mental activity required as new songs are acquired, mating occurs and nests are protected from predators. Another exciting discovery is the evidence of sensitive areas on their tongues and beaks, which enable them to preen in a manner similar to chimpanzee grooming. While Birkhead recognizes the problem of anthropomorphic interpretations of animal behavior, he describes a colleague's observation of birds engaging in an intense 17-minute greeting ceremony after being separated, behavior that suggested a human reunion. He admits to finding it tempting to infer that "birds experience similar pleasurable emotions." An entertaining book guaranteed to bring pleasure to bird-watchers that will also fascinate students contemplating a career in ecology.

      COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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  • English

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