The natural history of humankind, told through our long relationship with birds For the whole of human history, we have lived alongside birds. We have hunted and domesticated them for food; venerated them in our mythologies, religions, and rituals; exploited them for their natural resources; and been inspired by them for our music, art, and poetry. In Ten Birds That Changed the World, naturalist and author Stephen Moss tells the gripping story of this long and intimate relationship through key species from all seven of the world's continents. From Odin's faithful raven companions to Darwin's finches, and from the wild turkey of the Americas to the emperor penguin as potent symbol of the climate crisis, this is a fascinating, eye-opening, and endlessly engaging work of natural history.
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Oohhhh, I'm about to be mean.
I'm pretty sure I've read more interesting, detailed and relevant Wikipedia articles. If you googled the birds you can see on the cover, I think you'd get the gist of what is covered in a much more concise and organized fashion.
My thought going into this book is that there would be recounted moments in history, hopefully not particularly well known, that would cohesively indicate how these birds affect the world/human history. Instead this really is a just a collection of well known moments in history, and trivia about various birds, and then some socially conscious themes which seem out of place.
I can appreciate that the author draws attention to animal welfare and endangerment, industrial farming, use of animal products in fashion, use of pesticides and killing of any species for perceived human convenience which of course harms the ecosystem, and the climate crisis, but I feel like if that was the focus it would have been better served by a different book. Maybe the reason this didn't hit is the amount I read about such events in my first year as a vegan?
Rather than framing it as birds that changed the world, I feel like a more accurate framing of this is ten birds that humans used and misused and therefore feature in our history, mythology and current circumstances.
P.S. I don't need bible citations in my non-fiction, or the long form ‘birth of Christ' as a dating method.
✨Just Atheist Pet Peeves✨
⚠️Animal death
