Review form Anthrozoös, vol. 18, # 2 (Winter 2005)

 

Crow

Boria Sax. London: Reaktion Books, 2003. 184 pages. ISBN: 1-86189-194-6 (paperback).

Starting in Mesopotamia and progressing into the 20th century, author Boria Sax takes us on an exploration of human-crow relationships by examining references to the Corvid family ill literature, religion, cult stories, folklore, myth, history, science, art, and popular culture. And what do we learn from this excursion over thousands of years, from the Bible through the cult-classic "Crow" movie of 1993 and beyond? That crows and their relatives - most notably, ravens, jackdaws, jays, magpies, and rooks-remain an enigma, sometimes friend, sometimes foe, sometimes a portent for good, other times a signal of impending terror and doom, sometimes wise, other times, the fool. But rarely a neutral symbol.

I read this book hoping that Sax, with his wide-ranging exploration, might be able to resolve the ambivalence that humans seem to have toward crows. However, crows apparently remain unknowable. Even modern scientists who have spent many years studying the birds remain challenged by them, unable to summarize their behaviors into neat categories. As Sax points out, crows, like humans, seem to be complicated and intelligent beings, engaging in a complexity of behavior that makes them all but unpredictable. Patterns are there, but individual relationships, complex assessments of information and the ability to alter behavior during interactions as contexts change, leads to endlessly modifiable behavior and unexpected results. Throughout the book, Sax reminds us of the oddly unsettling relationship we have with crows. Crows are large and obvious in their black, sometimes iridescent, garb and loud, harsh call, and yet they tend to fade into the background of our daily lives and startle us when they suddenly catch our attention; these large, dark birds are clearly focused on pursuits that don't seem to involve us and that we can only wonder about.

Crow takes a suitably broad view of its topic, in keeping with the stated mission of the Animal series by Reaktion Books. Designed to explore "the historical significance and impact on humans of a wide range of animals," books examine the role of a particular animal in history around the world, exploring their roles in mythology, religion, science, food, trade, pet ownership, exhibits, film and photography, art and literary imagination. Sax, therefore, uses a far-ranging set of sources, from the Bible through various Egyptian and Roman documents, early European literary and natura1 history writings, the cultural lore of various native peoples (e.g., Celt, Inuit, Lenape, Hopi) and into the more modern era where people continue to explore our relationship with crows in popular books, films, scientific writings and art. A wonderful collection of illustrations and paintings are included, and there is a feast of references. And yet the book is spare and efficient at taking the reader through the ages and many cultures, touching on this notion or that perspective and moving along. In the end, readers are left wishing for more but definitely aware of the crows all around them.

I especially enjoyed the sections of the text that explored crows in Native American Indian cultural traditions, the story of the origins and uses of "Jim Crow," and the final sections about 2Oth century stories, poems, films, and scientific studies of crows and their relatives. I found the section on the history of the scarecrow especially moving. Sax skillfully conveys the shifting use of these objects, which were first developed to serve a real purpose, scaring corvid crop predators, and slowly devolved into some- thing less applied and more nostalgic. For me, this section, especially, captured the ambiguous relationship between humans and crows that is repeated throughout the book: often humans start out in a particular time and place wanting to interact in a direct, dominating and applied way with crows-kil1 them, scare them, use them to find carcasses or land-and wind up in a much more abstract, egalitarian, and uneasy relationship with these birds, realizing that we do not know them as we thought we did. It is almost petty to note any problems with the book. I found only three, and none are the fault of the author. First, the ambitious scope of the book (and the series) and the necessary range of sources precluded the author spending much time on anyone source or idea, giving the book a rather choppy feel. While the Introduction attempts to prepare us for this, with an overview of the Corvid family and of the history of humans and crows, it is still uncomfortable reading at times. Second, frequent typo- graphical errors mar the otherwise excellent design values of the book (e.g., beautiful quality of the book cover and pages, and crisp, high quality illustrations). One example, which occurs in a particularly serious and moving section, serves to illustrate the point: the researcher, Bernd Heinrich, apparently said, based on his many years of studying crows, "intimately, knowing all that goes on in their brains is, like infinity, and unreachable destination." The error is distracting when such a critical point is being made. If this only happened periodically, once or twice, in the book, it would be easily dismissed, but it happens often enough, and at critical enough junctures, to be a serious problem; hopefully, it will be addressed in a reprint. A third issue is that some illustrations seem at odds with their captions, where captions state that crows or other corvids are shown when the claim is not clear from the illustration itself (e.g., p. 157, a proto-Viking picture stone illustration in which the bird that is "probably a raven" looks as much like a small raptor or swift as a corvid). A bit more explanation in the text or caption might help the reader understand the certainty of the claims.

But these are minor issues given the wealth of information and the range of time and culture covered in the book. I particularly liked the Timeline feature at the end of the book, which shows all of the main points of the text in order, providing a quick and easy overview and reference. The list of references, including websites, is also a valuable resource. Overall, the book is a pleasure to read. I found it enjoyable, if somewhat disconcerting, to learn that the crow and its relatives have indeed been viewed in so many ways by humans and continue to be a source of mystery and charm for us today, and that we have not yet "solved the problem" of who they are or how they relate to us.

Dr. Penny L. Bernstein

Dept. of Biological Sciences, Kent State University Stark Campus N. Canton, OH 44720, USA

E-mai1: pbernstein@stark.kent.edu