Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans

Gifts of the Crow by John Marzluff and Tony Angell is a book proving that birds are a lot smarter than one may think. You may think that birds are just animals that live on this earth and strive for survival. Marzluff and Angell take the bird and prove to the readers that these magnificent animals are more than meets the eye and that with proper research and observation, a bird is actually an intelligent creature, just like us humans. Although this may seem bizarre and quite a bit farfetched, it is not since Marzluff is an expert on birds and their behavior through the years of study and research that he has conducted with birds. Along with his research, Marzluff has written and published many papers and books just like this one depicting the behavior of birds. Angell on the other hand, has less experience with research, but more experience in observing wildlife and transforming what he sees into works of art. Therefore, whether you think this book is accurate or completely false, I stand on the position that these authors are correct in the sense that birds do behave like humans mostly because the evidence is presented all throughout the book and how can you not believe something when evidence is presented in front of you? The main idea behind this book is basically Marzluff and Angell primarily focusing on the behavior of birds belonging to the avian family Corvidae including crows, ravens, jays, and nutcrackers. Throughout this book, the two authors do not try to persuade readers to agree with their writings and research, but instead attempt to portray to humans that these birds are more than meets the eye. The authors try to show how these birds are smarter and more intelligent than they appear to be. Throughout this book, we see concepts of neuroscience being presented. Betty is a crow and one of the birds that the two authors have been observing for some time. Betty shows cognitive abilities when the authors test her by putting bird food in a tiny bucket and they put this bucket in a glass cylinder. Next to the cylinder the authors put a twig. Betty is now placed by the experiment. She attempts to reach the food with only her break. She fails. Next she grabs the twig and tries to scoop the food out. She fails. Finally, she bends the tip of the twig to make hook and then she hooks the twig to the bucket and pulls the bucket out. What the authors observe here is that these birds have cognitive abilities as well as the ability of remembering actions. They call this the "knowledge of cause and effect". Betty knew that her beak would not reach the food so she looked for other means. She found the twig and used this. She knew she would not get it out with the straight twig so she bent the edge and made a hook. This is remarkable to observe since you can actually see the bird using its brain to think things through. Marzluff and Angell believe the bird was able to remember its actions and attain the goal which it strived to obtain because of their brains. Marzluff states that "the forebrain of a crow assesses sensory information, integrates this view of the environment with context and emotion to form memories, and sends electrical and chemical instructions to motor control regions to command action" (Marzluff and Angell 5). Another quite amazing example is the risk taking that crows take. Marzluff has been observing the risks that crows take as well. He gives one example of how crows have learned to simply duck if a car is approaching them rather than flying away. This gives crows an advantage to road kill since other animals will not go near road kill because they run the risk of getting killed themselves. That is not the case for crows. These birds will see a car coming, and due to what they know, they will simply duck and wait for the car to pass. This is hard to believe but Marzluff's studies and observations have proved the risk taking that crows encounter. Just one more example that stuck me while reading was a raven named Bela. Bela has been marked by Marzluff with a yellow ring on her claw to distinguish her from others. Marzluff has been going to the park and feeding her for quite some time now. Whenever he approaches, Bela swoops down from the tree and flies around him until he gives her the food. However one day Marzluff is walking with a group and Bela notices him, but instead of flying around him, this time Bela flies around, caws violently which this makes other crows start to fly around him and caw. What Marzluff believes happened here is that Bela used her recognition skills and remembered Marzluff, but did not recognize the others. She felt threatened and therefore retaliated in the way that she did. This just comes to show you how different these birds are and how smart and intelligent they can really be. There are a lot more stories just like these in the book that prove to the readers how smart these birds are. These stories have scientific evidence proving the true nature of these birds. When evidence is shown it is really hard to try and negate something and say it is untrue. Therefore, this book is a clear illustration of the intelligence of these birds.

BIRKHEAD, Tim. Bird Sense: What It's Like to Be a Bird. Walker. 2012. 266 + xxii p, illus., bibliog., index. $25.MARZLUFF, John, and ANGELL, Tony. Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans. Free Press. 2012. 289 + xiv p., illus., bibliog., index. $25.HERZOG, Hal. Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals. HarperCollins. 2010. 226 + viii p. $25.99.Good science writing is hard to beat. It's crisp, provides you with new insights into the physical world, and if the writer is good, opens up new worlds to you.Two of these three books -by Birkhead and Marzluff and Angell-- satisfy me on this level. The third -by Herzog-- does not.The two books on birds were part of a larger packet of books I bought from Amazon to satisfy my curiosity about these animals I can't ignore but know little about. I had read one book by Berndt Heinrich, a brilliant animal ethologist, on ravens so I bought three more (one on ravens, one -a classic--on bumblebees, and one autobiographical), which I have yet to read. These two books got caught up in the web of that buying spree.I[m just as interested in our attitudes toward animals -why are some okay to eat and others not? why do some repulse us and others not at all?--so I was looking for books on that topic too, and Herzog's popped up, along with a book by one of my favorite quirky historians, R. W. Bulliett, Hunters, Herders and Hamburgers (2005).This digression is simply to establish that I have a serious, though not scholarly, interest in the topics of animal capabilities and personalities and on how we perceive and relate to different kinds of animals.Birhkead's book on bird senses, and Marzluff's and Angell's on the capabilities and behavior of crows both satisfy me. The information is provides succinctly, the writing is crisp, both Birkhead and Marzluff (Angell is the illustrator) convey their passion about their subjects, and what they write about is fascinating. Both include a good deal of hard scientific information, not surprising given how much their field of studies has been enriched by the use of modern brain mapping techniques, but the hard stuff doesn't overwhelm the lay read (me). Rather, it gives what they write elsewhere credibility. The illustrations in both books are superb, and highly informative, a model of animal science illustrating. Birkhead especially is generous in detailing the contributions of past and other present day scientists in advancing knowledge in his field. Neither author claims too much for what is currently known. And if I haven't said it before, the prose in both of these books is admirably crisp.I bought the book by Hal Herzog because (1) I found the topic fascinating and (2) both Stephen Pinker and Irene Pepperberg, scientists whose books I have enjoyed, praised it. I'll be blunt. I didn't like the book. It's fuzzy where it should be hard, and it ends its stories just about the point I want to follow up on them. In short, although the book contains a great deal of interesting though I am not sure conclusive information on its subject, it's too anecdotal and much too cutesy for my taste. I'm sure a good book could be written on the subject of human tastes for animals but when it's written, it needs to be crisp in style, skeptical in analyzing, and much more compact than this rambling and sporadically entertaining account is.

A short time ago I came across an old photo. My brother was on the back porch with a crow and a dog.I have fond memories of the crow. I have no memories of the dog. My brother was six, so I had to be three years old.Blackie was the crow’s name and he was playful and full of fun. He loved to call me using my mother’s voice and I would come running. I fell for it every time.Around the same time, this book was a suggestion for me, and I tore into it happily.The interesting things are that crows are smart and engaging, as any crow lover can tell you. Marzuluff and Angell uses multiple sources, research and experience to confirm the belief that crows not only “do they make tools, but they understand cause and effect.”“Like humans, they possess complex cognitive abilities.” They can “discriminate, test, learn, speak, steal, deceive, seek revenge, windsurf, remember, play with cats and mourn.”The book has multiple anecdotes that are interesting and hilarious stories about crows and their naughty machinations.But unfortunately, the tedious jargon from the research and experiments with workings of their brains and the MRI’s and the testing of the dopamine and norepinephrine and serotonin and, etc., etc., etc. is more than l could take.So a book that I should have breezed through was constantly put to the side. What I hoped to give five stars, l can barely give three.These three stars are only for the crows. 🙁🌟

I've read many books about different species of bird over the years and was eagerly anticipating this one after reading all the rave reviews. However, I was left decidedly underwhelmed and struggled to even finish the book. It is full of unproven hypotheses, some of which are quite frankly ridiculous. It is also far too long, very repetitive and not particularly well written. The constant, overly detailed references to different parts of a crow's brain are bizarre and downright irritating. I am still interested in corvids, especially magpies, so I'd recommend people with similar curiosity join me in searching for something a lot better than this. Only the final chapter - which is quite a touching tribute to crows' place in our beleaguered world - saved me from awarding this lame effort a paltry one star!

This is a carefully researched, very readable and superbly illustrated work. There are ten chapters: 1 - Amazing Feats and Deep Connections. 2 - Birdbrains Nevermore. 3 - Language. 4 - Delinquency. 5 - Insight. 6 - Frolic. 7 - Passion, Wrath and Grief. 8 - Risk Taking. 9 - Awareness. 10 - Reconsidering the Crow. There's an illustrated appendix, divided into ten parts, that explains the anatomy and physiology of the crow-brain, and there are extensive source notes and references followed by a helpful index.Examples of intelligence are given relating to several species in the crow family including Caledonian crows, carrion crows, jackdaws, jays, magpies, ravens and rooks, and birds from a variety of countries, including Canada, England, Indonesia and the US, are involved. Care is taken to analyse the scientific findings to establish the precise kind of learning that has taken place in the minds of these various crow family members. The conclusion is that they are capable of following reasoning patterns similar to the basics underlying similar functions found in the human mind.Making everything even more interesting is the fact that the evolutionary route taken in the development of bird brains is different from that pursued in the evolution of mammalian brains, a fact which results in bird brains functioning differently from mammalian, including human, brains. Whereas mammals, including humans, have evolved from reptilian ancestors via the mammal-like reptiles, birds have evolved from reptiles via the therapsid dinosaurs. This work explains in an easy to follow fashion how all this came about and how the highly intelligent crow family is continuing to evolve and adapt to enable it to cope with the man made problems of the modern world.Although there's much we still have to learn about crow family intelligence our knowledge is increasing all the time as more observations, experiments and intelligence tests are carried out in an increasing number of places. In addition to this kind of information, this work is packed with fascinating accounts of various people's relationships with members of the crow family.The work is helpfully illustrated by Tony Angell's superb illustrations, which enhance the text in a revealing fashion that even the most inventive photography could not have achieved. In addition, the artist has created eight helpful illustrations explaining the working of the crow brain plus one drawing explaining the bird's nervous system. Text and drawings compliment each other in a fashion that fosters the easy assimilation of a whole hoard of inspiring facts about the intelligence of the crow family. This book is a great read and thoroughly recommended

A fantastic book, packed full of technical information and personal anecdotes with regard to this most complex and social group of birds. I really enjoyed reading about the antics of both wild and domesticated corvids, and the book is balanced between academic research into corvid biology, and real-life examples of interesting and often amusing behaviour; for example, the propensity of Ravens to pull the tails of other birds or animals, and an account of crows sliding down a slippery slope for the sheer joy of it. The mix of academic findings and personal accounts of individual bird behaviour makes the book an extremely informative and entertaining read.The seemingly human-like behaviours and emotional responses shown by members of the crow family are astutely observed and explored in detail, with a number of illustrations bringing these anecdotes to life. The question of whether corvids do have an awareness of the thought processes of others is explored, including their understanding of human motives and possible intentions towards them.Corvids are described playing, fighting, loving, hating, grieving, bearing a grudge, and displaying a whole range of emotional responses towards both other corvids and different species, and they are shown to be an absolutely fascinating group of birds who are, indeed, at times very human-like.

I learnt a lot about crows. I became interested in them after watching them every day in the park whilst having lunch. I bought this book to try and see what’s going on in their heads. Amazing animals and great book

Excellent book about corvid behaviour and with lovely illustrations too. Good mix of people's experience of unusual corvid behaviours and the hard science about how the bird's brains work - and the science writing was very accessible and minimused the jargon too.