Man and bird have similar brains

Carol Forsloff - Scientists discovered man and bird have a commonality.  While humans consider themselves significantly advanced over the animal kingdom, it turns out that the brain is very much like that of birds.

And actually the human brain is not that much different from many other animals as well.

Man tries to outwit others, and surely birds find their way home along vast reaches of the world.  Is that because of the brain and at least the ability to track oneself in time and space?

What University of California researchers found a few years ago is that the brains of birds and the auditory inputs in chickens are similar to that of humans and other mammals.

“And so ends, perhaps, this claim of mammalian uniqueness,” said Harvey J. Karten, MD, professor in the Department of Neurosciences at UCSD’s School of Medicine, and lead author of the study, that was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition.

Man and other mammals are often thought to have better-developed brains, but this new research raises questions about that.

The findings indicate that certain properties of the brain are not unique to mammals and may actually have evolved from ancient vertebrates.  This may be another piece of evidence regarding the theory of evolution conceived by Darwin.  Some might ponder whether or not man's evolution from other creatures might have occurred.  Before these findings most people thought it was clear that man was of a far higher order than the animals of the earth, specifically because of the complexity of man's brain.

“Animals like birds were viewed as lovely automata capable only of stereotyped activity,”said Karten.

So what is different now?

Karten’s research supplies the beginnings of an answer, which is said to be from an ancestor common to both mammals and birds that dates back at least 300 million years.

The new research has a number of implications, allowing the notion of bird brains as suitable models in diverse brain studies and also in establishing connections in the study of evolution of species.

In 2003 scientific research revealed that man and birds have similar shopping habits.  They display similar patterns when they search for food.

And as man continues to study the bird, perhaps that old adage of being a birdbrain might not be considered an insult after all.  One might also wonder how the female bird signals to the male it's time to shop and whether or not the result of that shopping impresses the male bird any better than it does the human male.