Divorce Among the Gulls: An Uncommon Look at Human Nature

A beautiful series of essays on how animal behavior reveals truths about human nature. This guy is an expert in his field and a fabulous writer.

I loved it! The Divorce of Gulls was introduced to me by a coworker for the info on the Medfly that she found interesting! And I read that small portion to pacify her and I had to read the rest! Such wonderful insights on human behavior! Mr. Jordan has a wonderful sense of humor! I love the way he reflects on life. It's not a subject that I normally read about: bats, rats, roaches, science experimentation - oh my! It was a great book and I am going to recommend it to anyone (and already have =>) who will listen!

Well written. An authority on the topic: BA in vertebrate zoology and Ph.D. in entomology. Wrote for Los Angeles Times Magazine, Smithsonian, Science 80, and Wigwag. "Gulls" make up only one chapter of the book, which is not strictly about "animals" but about finding origins in human behavior:"The idea that there is some common cause in the workings of the human and animal mind is often ridiculed and dismissed as anthropomorphism. But, asks William Jordan, what if the intellectual establishment has it backwards? What if, instead of attributing human motives to animals, we paid more attention to the animal motives in humans?" (excerpt from back cover)There is a fine line between the anthropomorphic and the significance of studying our common inheritance with the rest of the animal kingdom. Jordan succeeds. He balances the book well, with apt comparisons between the Homo Sapiens and the rest of the animal kingdom, providing insight into my existence and not attempting to foist human attributes back onto the animal world. He has fun with his topic and is playful with the reader, all however without sacrificing the discipline and the clarity which the reader expects from an animal behaviorist. This is one of those rare books which both informs and entertains ... and this mostly because his prose has a velocity which most authors of science cannot seem to maintain.

William Jordan's book is a gentle reminder that we share this earth with other creatures that may not be so far from the tree of our own personal roots. He nudges and cajols us into considering our own animal behaviour by his extraordinary observations of other species and their all too familiar human manifestations. From ants and seagulls to cockroaches and coyotes, Mr. Jordan takes you on a journey that insures you never see other species the same way again.

A delightful book written by a naturalist, Wm Jordan, who uses observations in the animal world to contemplate people and their relationships. For example he notes that about 25% of gulls undergo divorce, by reason of biological incompatibility, and speculates that amongst the human animal that, too, might constitute justifiable grounds for divorce. Here are but two of the chapters: DRACULA STUMBLES INTO BED He is making observations on fruit bats that he saw in Australia. One had difficulty in reaching its perch, and hung precariously, awkwardly, till he finally re-positioned himself, and this reminded Jordan of the time as a teenager he'd climbed a large rock and gotten stuck half way up. After watching his desperate attempts to reposition himself he concludes that while he does not know what thoughts a bat might think, he feels how the bat feels. There is a kinship there despite the void across the species. PHYSIOLOGY LAB The last essay. He describes his college physiology lab. Twelve "virgin minds, that is to say empty and unformed." The task was to demonstrate a biochemical reaction that occurs in the liver. For that they need livers, and for that they have white rats, though Jordan calls them "liver cases". They have nicknamed their instructor OWL, and he shows them how to kill the rats. "The rats look up. We students look down. We have shared ancestry with these creatures,... until some 68 million years ago when our destinies split." He describes many experiments. They write up their final reports. They get their grades. They have discovered nothing new to science. But then that wasn't the purpose. The whole point of the class was merely to get good data, so that they will have good grades, so that they can get into medical school. They have just been repeating experiments done earlier by other scientists. The animals were "educational sacrifices". Then he ponders the mind-set this type of course inevitably induces in the students. That life of animals is expendable. But it is a dangerous notion. If it gets carried away, what is to stop a scientist from extending it to humans? The Nazi's did experiments on cold tolerance during WWII. They were vitally interested in the subject, since their soldiers were freezing to death on the Russian Front. Their experimental animals were humans in such places as Dachau. The Germans developed, as a result, the best treatment of frostbite and hypothermia, and we use it to this day. Of course we all abhor the Nazi's as the epitome of evil. We'd never do it? Oh really? Think of the Tuskeegee syphilis experiments. American scientists once cut holes in the cheeks of retarded kids, inserted glass tubes and performed shock experiments to see if Pavlov conditioning in humans works the same as it does in dogs. Or how about our marching of soldiers into the site of a newly exploded atomic bomb in the 50's as "training"? New York University scientists once injected hepat