Which came first — the bowerbird or the egg?
One’s a perfect genius and the
other’s a perfect mystery, say Jennifer Ackerman and Tim Birkhead, in
two enthralling new books on bird behaviour
What
is it about birds? They are the wild creatures we see most often, their
doings and calls a daily reassurance that humans are not isolated in
our sentience. They descend from the first reptiles, while we come from
the first mammals. Across a gulf of evolution we contemplate a parallel
life which has evolved exhilaratingly different answers to the same
questions that existence asks of us. Cross-referencing allows us to
address the fundamentals. Darwin and his finches revealed how we came to
be. What else might birds teach us?
