Some birds, yesterday

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about birds. This may be because, at this time of the year, in my little corner of the world, it is spring; and birds love spring. I don’t know why they do — for reasons that may become clear later in this post — but they do.

Anyway, whilst sitting one day listening to the myriad chirps and cheeps and squawks and squeaks, I developed a scientific theory of birds, and I believe this theory to be both groundbreaking and irrefutable.

Now I am no scientist, let alone an ornithologist — I am a musician and a philosopher — so don’t try to disprove my theory, because your scientific weapons will just disintegrate when they come into contact with my infuriating philosopher’s shield.

My experiments are unrepeatable. My scientific method extends to gazing wistfully up at trees. I have no control group but the stars above. My ornithological knowledge goes as far as occasionally being able to identify a magpie if it’s close enough and I have my contact lenses in.

If you think not being a scientist means I’m not qualified to do science, then I’m afraid I can’t help you, because your argument is too logical, and I reject it. My ideas have no basis in any sort of verifiable fact, and I’m happy with that.

So, with that out of the way, let me explain my Groundbreaking Theory of Birds.

My theory is based on two key pillars of knowledge:

A vague recollection that someone once told me that birds are descended from dinosaurs

Noticing that, on occasion, birdsong exhibits a passing resemblance to the sound of old fashioned modems

Keep these pillars of knowledge in mind (if you are able to store pillars in your mind) because they’re important.

I am now going to ask you to imagine that you are a dinosaur. Scientists: feel free to skip this imaginative bit and go straight to the nuts and bolts later on.

It is slightly less than 66 million years ago and you are pottering about doing dinosaur stuff; eating leaves, eating other dinosaurs, drinking primordial soup (whatever, I don’t know; I never claimed to be a palaeontologist, so stop hassling me. I barely know what it means). Suffice to say that you’re a dinosaur and things are kind of okay, though maybe a bit boring if you’re honest with yourself. However, recently there have been some mutterings within the dinosaur community about a potential threat.

And not just any old threat; this is an existential threat.

There’s a big, scary star in the sky, and it’s getting bigger and scarier by the minute. Some of your dinosaur friends are just sort of shrugging their dinosaur shoulders. Whatever, a big, scary star. Have you tried this new amoeba and lizard soup? Others are more concerned; things that are big shouldn’t get scarier, and things that are scary shouldn’t get bigger.

The fossil record doesn’t necessarily reflect this, but I think there were clever dinosaurs and stupid dinosaurs. The stupid ones were ignoring the star, roaring incoherently, and munching on ferns and other dinosaurs.

The clever ones were getting concerned. And they were starting to mobilise. And to evolve.

Darwin may disagree with me on this next point, but he’s dead, so I think I can fairly easily fend off his arguments: amongst species, there are those that are good at evolving, and those that are crap at evolving. T. Rex was fairly good: yes — crap arms — but he’ll bite your head off if you so much as mention them, so not a major issue. Diplodocus, on the other hand, was awesomely big but — sorry, Diplodocus — not exactly nimble.

I suspect that, when they caught onto what was going on, the clever dinosaurs started furiously evolving. Like: what capabilities and tools are we going to need to avoid this big, scary existential threat? What would be the ultimate evolutionary game-changer that would give us the most chance of surviving? They were convening focus groups, drawing up action plans, and generally getting their shit together while all the dorky dinosaurs were absent-mindedly chewing on ferns.

And eventually, their hard work paid off: they worked out how to fly, and thus survived the meteor strike.

Think about it: Homo sapiens have taken around 200,000 years of evolution to work out how to fly, and only then by using embarrassing contraptions moulded out of bits of metal and plastic. Certain very clever dinosaurs worked out how to do it themselves over 65 million years ago. They evolved wing-like arms, and then feathers, and then got really quick at flapping those feathery arms to the point that they were able to propel themselves into the sky, and stay there.

Most people, when asked what super powers they’d like to have, say they’d love to be able to fly. Dinosaurs were way ahead of that game; they worked out how to do it long before humankind’s stumbling monkey ancestors were using their non-opposable thumbs to scratch their hairy arses.

My point is: certain very clever dinosaurs managed to avoid being rendered extinct by developing super powers. Certain dinosaurs had the wherewithal to survive a meteor strike.

Those dinosaurs were the birds.

And they’re still here, 65 million years later. Oh, and don’t think they haven’t kept evolving, because they have.

Why do I think this? This is where my second pillar of knowledge kicks in. Just listen to them. They sound like computer modems.

And this brings me to my overall thesis:

My Groundbreaking Theory of Birds is that birds are much more evolved than us. Birds are much cleverer than us. Birds have superhuman intelligence. We don’t understand what they’re saying because we’re too stupid. They are discussing concepts that go so far over our puny human heads that we may as well be ants scuttling across the pages of their doctoral thesis on string theory.

Like Gods, superhuman intelligences move in mysterious ways. Perhaps the ultimate way for birds to fulfil their goal (whether that goal be happiness, avian personal fulfilment, or something else that we can’t imagine) is to fly from tree to tree making chirping noises. Who are we to say? We enjoy only a small percentage of their brain power. Us criticising their behaviour would be like a woodlouse encouraging me to read more romantic fiction. What does he know? Piss off woodlouse.

“But their brains are smaller!” I hear you cry. Well, stop crying, because that means nothing. iPhones are much smaller than those massive IBM computers that they unnecessarily wheeled about fifty years ago. That’s not because they’re less advanced. It’s because they’re more advanced. “Big is clever, small is stupid” is the kind of human argument that our bird masters simply have no time for. (What they do have time for, I have no idea, because I too have a puny human brain). But make no mistake: what the birds are discussing is immensely complicated and of huge importance.

What should we do with this Groundbreaking Theory of Birds? I don’t know. That’s not my job.