Paper short abstract:

In 1867, British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace drew an analogy between the nests of birds and human dwellings. This paper argues that birds' nests and their study (the science of caliology) were an important part of human-animal relations in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Paper long abstract:

In an 1867 essay titled ‘The Philosophy of Birds' Nests’, British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace drew an analogy between the nests of birds and human dwellings. Both birds and people, he argued, drew on the materials around them to build their homes and learnt how to improve these structures by experience and imitation. Scholars have documented numerous cases in which non-human animals have become part of human technological systems. Less work, however, has been done on animal technology and how structures like birds' nests were understood. This paper argues that birds' nests and their study (the science of caliology) were an important – if short-lived – part of human-animal relations in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing upon ornithological archives, books, and periodicals, this paper explores how and why the comparison between birds' nests and human dwellings was made. Wallace and his supporters recognised that nests were not static constructs and were often integrated into human dwellings and infrastructure. This flexibility suggested that birds possessed reason and did not operate on instinct alone. However, the attempt to construct a comparative psychology based on the technological sophistication of homes led to the replication of the colonial era divide between ‘savage’ and ‘civilised’ peoples. Drawing closer to animals meant rehashing racial stereotypes.