The Parrot in the Mirror: How evolving to be like birds made us human

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    The Parrot in the Mirror: How evolving to be like birds made us human Format: Hardback First Published: Published By: Oxford University Press
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    Pages: 224 Illustrations and other contents: 19 black and white images and a four page colour plate section Language: English ISBN: 9780198846109 Categories: , , , , , ,

    How similar are your choices, behaviours, and lifestyle to those of a parrot?We humans are not like other mammals. We look like them, but we don’t act like them. In fact, many of our defining human traits: our longevity, intelligence, monogamy and childrearing, and learning and language, all deep parts of what it means to be human, are far more similar to birds than to our fellow mammals.

    These similarities originate not from shared ancestors but from parallel histories. Our evolutionary stories have pushed humans and birds to the same solutions. In The Parrot in the Mirror, AntoneMartinho-Truswell explores these similarities to argue that we can learn a great deal about ourselves by thinking of the human species as ‘the bird without feathers’.

    This is also a book about convergent evolution – evolution that drives very different species to very similar outcomes and behaviours. The traits we share with birds but not mammals are the result of similar, specific pressures that demanded similar solutions – and exploring these similarities can help us understand both why we evolved to be the way we are, and also how very unusual some of our behaviours are in the animal kingdom, Drawing on a rich array of examples across the natural world,Martinho-Truswell also demonstrates the ways in which parrots are our biological mirror image; an evolutionary parallel to ourselves. In contemplating what we share with the birds, and especially the parrots, we understand how close nature came to creating another lineage of radical intelligence onEarth, and we also come to better understand ourselves.

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    One can see why this book was written -- convergent evolution. Illustrations of the ways in which similar challenges lead to similar solutions. And, at this level, I must say it is a pretty entertaining read. * Michael Ruse, The Quarterly Review of Biology * Martinho-Truswell reports lots of interesting animal behavior here. Readers will learn a lot about the capabilities of the bird brain and body as well as their own. * Joanna Burger, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick * A must read for anyone with an interest in bird/human behavior. * Ian Paulsen, Macquarie University, The Birdbooker Report * entertaining * Clive Cookson, Financial Times, Summer Books 2022: Science * It's a fascinating, indeed almost surreal topic, and the book is full of facts and observations about how birds, and we, have evolved in similarly exceptional ways. * Gregory Day, Sydney Morning Herald * Engagingly and entertainingly written, this book places some of the many recent discoveries about bird intelligence into a fascinating human-bird framework. * Tim Birkhead * This is a short book written in a refreshingly readable style.[...]The Parrot in the Mirror is clever, fun, and [...] reminds us that wonder exists far beyond our own species. * Henry Mance, Financial Times * Having read [The Parrot in the Mirror], you won't look at yourself in the mirror in quite the same way. * Simon Ings, New Scientist * I was happy to be learning about birds as birds and not as models for my own species... the basic premise of The Parrot in the Mirror was persuasive. * Frank Brown Cloud, Public scholar Bloomington, IN *

    Author Biography

    Antone Martinho-Truswell is a behavioural ecologist whose work focuses on animal minds and learning, especially in birds and cephalopods, intelligent species whose evolutionary history differs dramatically from that of mammals. He has been published in Science, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Current Biology, and elsewhere, and has been covered in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Times, and The New Scientist, as well as on BBC Radio and TalkRadio. He has also written on longstanding questions in biology, animal behaviour, and human society for Aeon and the BBC. Martinho-Truswell is currently Dean of Graduate House at St Paul's College, Sydney, and was previously Fellow in Biology at Magdalen College, Oxford.