The Bird Way The Bird Way

The Bird Way

a new look at how birds talk, work, play, parent, and think

    • 5.0 • 1 Rating
    • $14.99
    • $14.99

Publisher Description

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Genius of Birds, a radical investigation into the bird way of being, and the recent scientific research that is dramatically shifting our understanding of birds — how they live and how they think.

‘There is the mammal way and there is the bird way.’ This is one scientist’s pithy distinction between mammal brains and bird brains: two ways to make a highly intelligent mind. But the bird way is much more than a unique pattern of brain wiring, and lately, scientists have taken a new look at bird behaviours they have, for years, dismissed as anomalies or mysteries. What they are finding is upending the traditional view of how birds conduct their lives, how they communicate, forage, court, breed, survive. They’re also revealing the remarkable intelligence underlying these activities, abilities we once considered uniquely our own — deception, manipulation, cheating, kidnapping, infanticide, but also, ingenious communication between species, cooperation, collaboration, altruism, culture, and play.

Some of these extraordinary behaviours are biological conundrums that seem to push the edges of–well–birdness: A mother bird that kills her own infant sons, and another that selflessly tends to the young of other birds as if they were her own. Young birds that devote themselves to feeding their siblings and others so competitive they’ll stab their nestmates to death. Birds that give gifts and birds that steal, birds that dance or drum, that paint their creations or paint themselves, birds that build walls of sound to keep out intruders and birds that summon playmates with a special call — and may hold the secret to our own penchant for playfulness and the evolution of laughter.

Drawing on personal observations, the latest science, and her bird-related travel around the world, from the tropical rainforests of eastern Australia and the remote woodlands of northern Japan, to the rolling hills of lower Austria and the islands of Alaska’s Kachemak Bay, Ackerman shows there is clearly no single bird way of being. In every respect, in plumage, form, song, flight, lifestyle, niche, and behaviour, birds vary. It’s what we love about them. As E.O Wilson once said, when you have seen one bird, you have not seen them all.

GENRE
Science & Nature
RELEASED
2020
2 July
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
352
Pages
PUBLISHER
Scribe Publications
SELLER
Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
SIZE
2.1
MB
Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds
2004
Crows Crows
2007
Peterson Reference Guide To Bird Behavior Peterson Reference Guide To Bird Behavior
2020
What It's Like to Be a Bird What It's Like to Be a Bird
2020
Gifts of the Crow Gifts of the Crow
2012
In the Company of Crows and Ravens In the Company of Crows and Ravens
2008
The Genius of Birds The Genius of Birds
2016
What an Owl Knows What an Owl Knows
2023
The Social Network Diet The Social Network Diet
2011
Die Weisheit der Eulen Die Weisheit der Eulen
2024
L'enginy dels ocells L'enginy dels ocells
2023
Bevingad intelligens Bevingad intelligens
2018
Death on the Derwent Death on the Derwent
2019
Land Land
2021
Cold Enough for Snow Cold Enough for Snow
2022
Limberlost Limberlost
2022
The Anarchy The Anarchy
2019
A Bigger Picture A Bigger Picture
2020