Blog #15

David Abram's book Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology was vey enjoyable, or the little part that we read.  I could understand the book much easier when compared to the videos that we watched in class of him speaking.  In the introuction of his book, he states "Owning up to being an animal, a creature of the earth."  What he is trying to say is that we must admit that we are creatures of the earth, a characteristic that many seem to forget sometimes and place themselves above others.  He also says in the introduction that "Tthis book is about becoming a two-legged animal, entirely a part of the animate world whose life swells withing and unfolds all around us."  I would have liked to read the full book to get a better understanding of what Abram actually meant by this statement instead of an overview.

Another chapter of Abram's book that we read was based on the idea of Language.  This chapter discusses the means of communicatio among the birds.  Abram says there are three typres of calls: begging calls, aggression calls, and alarm calls.  The begging calls are usually heard in late spring or early summer and are made by calling for food.  The aggression calls arise when the male bird flies into the terriotory of another male from the same species.  The alarm call is the sound when danger is sensed.  This will occur if a predator is in the area and the bird feels violated.  I believe I have seen all of these types of bird calls because birds are everywhere around us and usually the first thing we wear in the morning when we wake up in the spring and summer.

In relation to this chapter, we watched a film called Winged Migration.  I really liked this film much better than the Kestrel's Eye, because there was narration.  This film allowed the viewers to see the perspective from the bird's eye view and followed them on their migration route.  In this film, I was able to see all of the calls that Abram had discussed in his chapter on the language of birds.  I found it neat in this film that when one bird left, the others followed; it was as if the birds were not independent whatsoever.  Or it could have been that they did not want to be left behind.