Humans might not be the only species on the planet manipulating fires to get what they want.
Animals do the most amazing things. Read about them in this series by Janaki Lenin.
Some say the one thing that distinguishes humans from animals is the use of fire. The title of evolutionary biologist Richard Wrangham’s book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human captures the kernel of that idea – wielding fire made us who we are. Running big brains requires turbo power, and raw meat doesn’t provide enough energy to run these supercomputers. Cooking the plentiful starchy tubers released brain development from calorific restraints. Such manipulation of fire is a skill no other animal has shown.
Not until now. Although they may not roast their meals, a few Australian raptors seem to set the undergrowth alight to flush out their prey.
The Aboriginal peoples of Australia set fire to the landscape at the end of long dry seasons, when wild food resources were hard to find. Burnt plants and grasses put out new growth attracting herbivores like kangaroos. When animals gather in numbers, hunting them becomes easier. Burning also induced edible plants to grow. Aboriginal communities use fire so extensively that ecologists call it ‘fire-stick farming’.
Every year, 30 to 50% of northern Australia burns. Dry savannahs, especially with their piles of inflammable material, are tinderboxes that go up in flames annually.
Wildfires attract some birds like black kites. Scores of insects, reptiles and rodents escaping from the conflagration are easy pickings. Once the birds snatch a morsel, they perch somewhere safe and tuck into it. Sometimes, they even pick up barbecued prey. Being airborne, they don’t have to worry about getting singed as they move with the fire front.
But can these raptors make the leap from exploiting an already raging fire to creating one?
In his autobiographical book (retold by Douglas Lockwood) I, the Aboriginal, published in 1962, Phillip Waipuldanya Roberts describes seeing a bird pick up and carry a flaming stick with its talons from a fire front, only to drop it on unburnt dry grass half a mile away. Roberts went on to suggest his people may have learned to flush out prey with fire from the birds. This behaviour intrigued Robert Gosford, an Australian ornithologist interested in traditional knowledge. He collated published records and put out the word for eyewitness accounts of similar bird behaviour.
Such stories are familiar to the Aboriginal communities living in Western Australia, Northern Territory, and Queensland that they enact as part of their religious ceremonies. The emblem of an Aboriginal land management organisation is one such bird.