“compare to The Naked Ape, 1967 More than four centuries ago, the French essayist Michel de Montaigne cautioned his readers not to take too much pride in human intelligence. Other creatures, after all, had their own forms of ingenuity. Bees seemed clever at organizing, swallows displayed great resourcefulness in making their nests and elephants used fighting tactics of impressive military precision. Montaigne chafed at humans' tendency to credit superior intellect for our achievements, while shrugging off the marvels of other species as the product of instinct. He put it this way: "Our empty arrogance makes us prefer to owe our adequacies to our selves rather than to the bounty of Nature; we prefer to lavish the natural goods on other animals, giving them up so as to flatter and honor ourselves with acquired properties." Noah Strycker makes a similar point in "The Thing With Feathers," his book about bird behavior. "A recent shift in scientific thinking about animal behavior encourages us to concentrate less on the uniqueness of humans and more on what the human animal shares with other animals," he writes. Activities once considered strictly human, such as dancing to music, recognizing one's own reflection and creating art "are now recognized in birds," he adds. "This isn't anthropomorphism at all; anyone who suggests otherwise is ignoring a large part of what it means to be a bird." ”
