And Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans

A fun book that will challenge your understanding of the avian world around you. Even if you skip over the neurochemical descriptions, as I mostly did, there is plenty of easily accessible material here to hold your interest. An easy read that will make you look at the crows you walk, bike, or drive by every day in an entirely different light.

This books describes and attempts to explain the fascinating behaviour of (primarily) crows and ravens. The working of the birds' brains is also described, but because it is paired with the birds' activities, that information does not bog the reader down in the technical sections.

I have always been interested in crows and this book just makes them that much more interesting I would recommend this book to any bird lover for a well written and enjoyable delve into the world of the crow.

Like others who reviewed this book I found that the continued repetition of what crow behavior does to the physiology of the brain a little annoying. It would have been welcome in the early part of the book but then not repeated every time an interesting piece of behavior was described. I have many books on crows and found this one full of wonderful information, learned new things, etc. If one skips over the repeated sections, it is a great book.

Having an the store Parrot and seeing how clever he can be, I was not totally surprised at the intelligence of the Corvids. This book goes into great detail about the brain of this animal and spices it up with real life stories showing the remarkable intelligence of crows and raven. A fascinating, totally enjoyable book.

Gifts of the Crow will facinate anyone who reads the book. They are so smart it's no wonder they are called "the feathered apes!" The documented stories of their adventures will interest bird lovers. There is quite a bit of technical data in the book which could discourage some folks, but stay with it so you don't miss any of the great stories. I personally am conducting a "Crow feeding experiment" of my own and have received 2 gifts from the Crow clan. KLC

Explanations of brain function was interesting but repeated antidotes and retelling of similar stories had me skimming from chapter 8 onward. I think I wanted a book on how crows and Ravens live, where they nest and there almost no info of that sort here. The writing was clunky and dry.

Delightful, fascinating, enlightening, well written, and painstakingly illustrated. So much knowledge, research, and care packed into a fun reading experience. It's about crows and other corvids, but it's also about humans and other animals. It's about biology and neuroscience and evolution and psychology and more.

Far too informative on the brain research done on these birds. I don't know many people that would care how the brain is designed or works of a bird. But information about what the bird can do is interesting.

Fascinating. Not only an accessible study of a family of animals, but a reappraisal of the idea that only humans think and act in certain ways. The technical parts get a little repetitive, and some of the anecdotes are hard to believe. Other than that, it was a pleasure.

I found the book fascinating from a behavioral perspective, but for me (a non scientist) it bogged down in some passages explaining the scientific relation of brain function and neurotransmission in the same section. Overall a very interesting read.

As a textbook, this would probably be topnotch, but I was expecting something more anecdotal, and got some actual crow stories, and a lot of neuroscience. What actual crow stories there were were fascinating, but I don't have the background to appreciate the very specific scientific jargon. Plus about a third of the book was taken up with acknowledgements, bibliography, index, and drawings of brains and the like.

Dog of a book! Weirdo bio-technicians trying to be authors. They should have hired a pro writer/editor. Reads like white papers from a crow study lab of PhDs with no social skills. Even if they did hire a pro their specific subject matter, lab results, may be just too uninteresting.

IT WAS AN INTERESTING BOOK HOWEVER IF ONE DID NOT HAVE A BACKGROUD IN BIOLOGY IT WOULD BE DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND. i WORK AT AN ORINTHOLOGY CENTER & HAVE A DEGREE IN bIOLOGY SO TO ME IT WAS OK. i ALSO HAD AN UNUSUAL EXPERIENCE W/ 4 CROWS & i WANTED TO SEE IF ANYTHING LIKE IT WAS MENTIONED IN THE BOOK.

Price a little high bearing in mind the paper quality which was below expectations for a hardback.
Delivery & packing was very satisfactory.
Content was frankly a little disappointing; plenty of anecdotal info & "old stories" about crows, but little in depth material (no one crow was followed for any significant time).
A great deal of space devoted to scientific explanations which would be of interest only to a professional avian biologist or nuero-scientist. I found myself skipping many such pages, a new experience for me!
This book attempt to straddle too wide an audience.

With one significant reservation I really enjoyed this book. I love watching birds visiting the feeders in my garden, especially the magpies, and knew that the crow family included some of the most intelligent birds. I am also, as you will know if you have read my blog, very interested in animal intelligence, and what it can tell us about human intelligence. This book contains some wonderful accounts of, for example, the ability of crows to recognise individual people, and the account of ravens surfing the Colorado winds makes one wonder what other things they can get up to which have not yet been documented. Details are brought together of many accounts of apparently intelligent behaviour, together with descriptions of well planned experiments, which combine to make you realize how smart some birds really are. For those who want to explore further there are extra notes and an extensive bibliography. If you are interested in animal intelligence or bird behaviour this book is a "must read".

The problem is that really it is not one book but two. The part I have described is concerned with the behavioural evidence which demonstrates the intelligent behaviour in the crow family. It is written in an easy to read style - and the description on the dust cover confines itself to this part of the book, suggesting that the publishers were also aware of the problem and avoided mentioning something which could put some readers off. There is no doubt that if the book stopped at the point I described above I would be very happy to give a copy to an intelligent 12 year old bird watching enthusiast and suggest that they start looking for, and recording, the behaviour of the crows and magpies they see. It would encourage them to realise that everyone can make interesting and original scientific observations and possibly they would later decide to follow a career as a scientist.

However the book also deals in detail at the structure and biochemistry of the bird brain. Where this is covered in the appendix I have no problem with it, but the real problem is that in many places in the body of the book the subject suddenly switches, in mid page, to a technical description relating to the internal works of the brain and enzymes that are involved. This suddenly increases the "reading age" of the text from the young amateur scientist level to something approaching the graduate scientist level. The juxtaposition with field observations sometimes gives the impression that the "intelligent" behaviours that have just been described were directly followed up by detailed laboratory research on the same birds, which was not the case. On other occasions the technical discussion does not really help the argument as to whether the described behaviour was really intelligent or not. My opinion is that the book would have been more accessible to more people if this specialist material had been relegated to the Appendix, where it would still be available to those interested in understanding what is currently known about the internal workings of a bird's brain.

In the chapter `Birdbrains nevermore', Marzluff offers a background on avian neuroscience that is cutting edge. Throughout the book, Marzluff's explanations use neural anatomy, chemistry and processes to provide a technical basis for corvid thought and memory, with care taken to distinguish between more proven elements and well informed conjecture. Fascinating comparisons are drawn with human thought and memory processes. Even with diversions to appendices, these can become slightly repetitive and it may take a couple of reads to integrate the technical terms and expanations into anything intelligible. Comprehension is aided by a vast number of examples, some entertaining, which are grouped in slightly anthropomorphic titles such a `delinquency', `insight' and `frolic'. Many readers will enjoy the book just for these natural history observations.

Marzluff takes on a difficult task, leading the reader from amusing corvid behaviour to reasonably complex neuroscience for which full explanations are not practical. Any dissonance this creates should be considered in terms of the magnitude of such an undertaking - Gifts of the Crow is a worthwhile introduction which provides an extensive bibliography for further research. The argument for corvid intelligence is won hands down.

Very interesting, entertaining but verified stories combined with legitimate research which can be a bit boring without the stories. Some was very informative. It covers all corvids, not just crows.

In many ways this is a wonderful book, filled with valuable information about crows and ravens. It does, however, rather miss the mark in a few ways. The authors, despite all their arguments relating to the similarities between crow and human behavior, still suffer from anthropocentricism, repeatedly using the terms "humans" and "animals" as though humans belonged to a seperate and superior class of being. This is even reflected in the book's subtitle, which more properly should read "How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds and Humans to Behave in Similar Ways." Another disconcerting element is the authors' seeming inability to decide whether they are writing a textbook or a work for a general audience. Referring to themselves in the third person, by first name, in the text is a decidedly odd compromise between the two. I could not help feeling throughout my reading of "Gifts of the Crow" that the authors' deep appreciation and fondness for corvids was continually being kept under scientific wraps, only to pop out briefly now and then in a side comment.
All of that aside, this is still a great book about corvids. If you are interested in a more vibrant look at crows, from the naturalists' point of view, and one where the fascinating and illustrative stories are in the witnesses' own voices, I recommend Michael Westerfield's "The Language of Crows", available from the crows.net website.

It was stunning to read about corvids brains and interactions with the world around them and us. I loved every word. A threat read. If the technical info gets daunting you can skip it without losing any part of the message.

Until they ship the actual gifts of the crow rather than builders whatever mojumbo cd in the package this is just an adventure in futility. Interesting topic probably a great cd but after the second wrong cd I quit trying. Someone's playing games and I don't care who.

It gets bogged down in some very technical & scientific terms & writing. I'm a biologist & even I grew weary of all the anatomical & physiological terminology described & presented in each chapter. Much of it is repeated. All the technical info could just as easily been introduced in a beginning chapter or as an appendix. I felt that aspect was important, but grossly overused & unnecessary over & over & over again.

With that said, the stories, the anecdotes, the research, the personal accounts and stories are interesting, funny, witty, vibrant, exciting & just plain enjoyable. I came away amazed by these animals and what they can do.

So, if you're into all the scientific jargon - you'll love this book! And if you're not, just skip over those pages (it's easy to do) and read about corvids and you too will love this book.

My family loves crows, especially my parents, so I sent this book out to my dad for his birthday. It was a hit! He loves it. Will update with more info once he reads it and tells me alllll about it :)