Eavesdrop - Feb 21 2022

 

Eavesdrop

Feb 21 2022

They study birdsong.

Because bird brains

are more clever than we thought.

Are there actual words

or merely calls?

Is it language, or art,

inborn or acquired?

If only we could eavesdrop

on the secret lives of birds.

Seduction

aggression

territorial dispossession.

A call to arms,

raising the alarm

when predators threaten.

And parroting sounds

just for the fun of it.

Mostly, though, it's love songs,

demonstrating fitness

and warning off rivals.

Like rock stars, and lead guitarists

who always get the girl,

while leaving guys like me

who can't keep time or hold a tune

singing to ourselves.

But learning?

Actual words

the art of conversation?

Not rocket science

just simple gossip.

The usual cattiness,

dishing

about who's sleeping with whom

who will get promoted

why we all dislike her.

And then I imagine

empty skies, and a soundless world.

A sterile place,

where human voices

are all there is to hear,

trying to out-shout each other

listening to ourselves.

The recent Atlantic had a piece on the complexity of bird communication, the question of what constitutes language and what is better charactized as vocalization. While reading, I recalled how the disparaging expression “bird brain” was a misnomer, arising from presumptions based on anatomy. But now we know that while they may lack a cortex, their tegmentum (we have one as well) does the same thing. This is a good example of how, in our stubborn anthropocentrism, we repeatedly underestimate animal intelligence.

Anyway, I jotted down what became my opening line just to see if it might lead somewhere, and this is the result: a fun little riff, which at least is an easier read than the article! (Yes, a “fun little riff”, but admittedly, it does get rather dark at the end.)