Feathers [Hardcover]

I'm not entirely sorry that I bought this book, but it was not all that I had hoped for. What I envisaged was something that, as a non scientist, I might struggle with a bit from time to time. I imagined that I might labour my way through some of the more technical sections, and want to use the book as a reference text after reading it. But the book is not packed with technical detail, and what there is is so diluted by the author's far from offensive but nonetheless committedly prosaic and annecdotal style, that one is never in the least challenged. Or at least, not technically. There'a pun about corn here somewhere: if I was Thor Hanson, I would start gently with a family annecdote, take you on a quick trip to a grain silo, and deliver the punchline just when you were beginning to give up hope. For me the challenge was struggling with the doubt as to whether yet another annecdote to soften the scientific pill was actually worth reading. I found myself reflecting constantly on the structure of the text. It's a bit like some modern documentary programmes where the writers seem to feel that we need entertaining as much, if not more, than we need informing.

Example: I didn't need to know anywhere near that much about Las Vegas showgirls, fly tying and fly fishing (though as an ex fly fisherman, I found this section thin on any real detail), various family junkets, the authors serial failure to deal with the simple problem of foxes and poultry (they aren't magicians, if they get in, you failed, get it??), and his method of killing bullfrogs.

Occasionally, the text really started to get going, as with the description of grebes ingesting feathers, but this always stopped far too quickly. There is some good stuff in this book, but not enough of it.
Ho hum.

When I think of dinosaurs, I think of T. Rex, a gigantic creature stomping its way to domination. But dinosaurs came in all sizes, and, as Thor Hansen shows in Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle, it's not too hard to picture them as progenitors of our featured friends the birds. Take a look at a turkey: strip it of its feathers and you've got the basic dino shape.

It was never easy for evolutionists to prove this point--what's needed are fossils, and delicate feathers are hardly the material to etch their history in stone. Still, in Germany in 1861, the fossil remains of Archaeopteryx lithographica came to light, and seemed to be the missing link between dinosaurs--technically theropods--and birds. What made the link? Feathers. How and why feathers evolved, though, is still a matter of much debate and conjecture.

Hansen lets the opposing camps in the long-running scientific battle state their cases--this kind of feather first, or that one; learning to fly by running and jumping, or by hopping down from branches--and brings the protagonists to life. He's good with history and personality, and even better explaining the science, directly and by analogy.

Hansen feels a need to canvas feathers from all angles, which occasionally feels forced. He takes us on junkets--to Vegas, where the showgirls wear elaborate dyed feathers, for instance--but he's usually not wasting our time.

We end up learning how birds can survive and thrive in bitter cold temperatures: it's those feathers again. They have amazing powers of insulation, trapping air in multiple, minute ways to keep their owners toasty. (Just like campers in their goose down sleeping bags.) Likewise, birds like cormorants that dive into cold water for fish always keep bone dry: feathers again, repelling the water so effectively that researchers at Gore-Tex are trying to plumb their secrets. And still other species lack feathers for evolutionary reasons. Eagle, condors, vultures, and other raptors have bald heads: plucking dinner from road kill would be intolerably messy otherwise.

Hansen is a talented writer who keeps the chapters moving, one right into the next. He injects himself into the story in the right way: to move the narrative forward. By the end of the book, which helpfully includes an illustrated guide to feathers, I had a completely new appreciation for feathers, and the creatures sporting them. Next time you see a feather on the ground, pick it up and marvel: millions of years of evolutionary perfectionism went into making it.

This book was an unexpected diamond. Everything you ever wanted to know about feathers, birds and flight is here. The author succeeded in convincing me that feathers are Nature's most wonderful invention - almost! This should be more appealing to perhaps those with a biological leaning but even I, a simple chemist, thoroughly enjoyed it. And I was left persuaded that birds are the modern counterparts of dinosaurs. I was hugely tickled by this well presented book.