Can birds do things like use "hands" and smile?

"Bird"--now that's a broad term. It's like saying "mammal". Yes, a lion can do it and a horse can't. An osprey might be outdone by a crow in one fictional situation, but maybe a kestrel's better than a mallard just for another. What types of birds are we talking here?

Well, I'll just ramble a little anyway.

Now, muscovy ducks, they're really cool. They have these small claws on their wings which they use to climb trees. Some other bird has it too, although its name escapes me at the moment. Maybe--just maybe--I'd buy it if you had such a bird, but not otherwise. (I know your blacksmith was an example, but... I just can't get that to work. At all) Maybe with beak assistance. No, scratch that. It should be possible by using the beak. Just look at the parrots. Wings, no. Absolutely not. But why would they need blacksmiths, anyway? I mean, they're birds.

I own a wide variety of birds, from quails and pheasants to budgies, cockatiels and the said ducks, and no, they've never smiled. It's just not possible. They make various noises, though--happy noises, aggressive noises, and you can generally read a lot from their body language, the way they fluff their feathers, etc. A calm bird is all puffy fluff. Muscovy ducks and cockatiels have crests they raise and lower; both hiss when aggressive/faced with a threat--a mother muscovy duck is plain savage and will even attack humans if they threaten her young or her nest.

Have you ever owned a bird? Or do you have any friends/family members/friendly neighbours who own a bird? Or a pet shop? Or just a place where you can observe wild birds? I don't mean to be rude, but you sound a little inexperienced with birds--the best thing you can do is to observe live ones, preferably the breeds you're writing about.

Then read and watch videos and documentaries and ask people. Know your stuff, so you don't mess it up. A falcon will kill his prey with his beak; contrary to popular belief, eagles and hawks do not. They hang onto their prey with their wicked talons until the prey bleeds to death.

ETA, I couldn't find what I was looking for on YouTube, but to go off a rooster. A happy one (who's found a treat) goes this light, rolling "blukk-blukk-blukk!", he goes cock-a-doodle-do to say that "I'm here, you're in my territory, I challenge you to come forth! I've got more balls than you, now attack!", and he makes this really weird half-strangled noise when he hears an unfamiliar sound. He doesn't smile, but it's easy to tell his mood from those noises.

And muscovy ducks! One glance at this lady tells you she's one pissed bird. Notice the bulge that appears when she hisses. Her ducklings, however, are perfectly calm and safe--you can hear that from their happy chippering. This lady makes the typical "nesting noise" near the end there; that quacking's reserved for nesting and nesting only. So if you've got a muscovy duck in your society, the other birdies can hear that she's "with child." "WHERE ARE YOU, MOMMY?" - you can just hear the poor thing's desperate. You don't need no terrified facial expression.

Rambling, woot.

The more the birds behave like birds, the more interesting the story will be. The more they're just human beings with feathers, the less interesting it becomes.

A very, very long time ago, in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, I read a Mary A. Turzillo story called 'Kill Dance'. It had sentient raptor-like avians behaving like real birds, and it was chilling and remarkable.

Animal fiction is often problematic. Too many people try to write humans-in-animal-suits, and it just doesn't work.

Having birds use hands and smile violates the biology, the physiology, and the morphology of birds. They are, as Smilin' Ted says above, just humans in feather suits then.

Birds aren't made to use their "hands" except as wings. Study a little ornithology and get some books on bird biology. Their "fingers" are actually the outer tips of their wings. Their "arms" are the inner portions of their wings. Allowing a bird to manipulate its wings as hands would probably eliminate their ability to fly.

Smiling? No way. Smiling is the revealing of the teeth in a manner that is not fundamentally hostile. It is a human perception and the only non-human species that appear capable of smiling, and learned it from humans, are dogs and chimpanzees. In all other cases the revealing of teeth is not an act of pleasure, it is an act of danger, usually the predecessor action to an attack by a predator. Sheep, cattle, horses, etc., do not reveal their teeth.

In addition, birds are morphologically incapable of smiling. They have no lips and no teeth to smile with. Smiling is a phenomenon they strictly cannot achieve due to their basic morphology.

If you make a bird be capable of things that a bird is not fundamentally capable of, it's no longer a bird.

Why not study bird behavior in-depth and figure out how to work real birds into a society and your story that make sense and stand in accordance with what they are actually capable of? That would be a much more interesting story.

My parrot does not use his talons for any thing other than holding onto his perch or to hold food. He will reach his talons out and shake hands with me or to comb his feathers after a bath.

As to smiles, its impossible. But that does not mean my parrot does not have personality traits and most of them I understand. I should after 30 years...

Now, some birds do use tools, like sticks to go after insects in hard to reach places. Seagulls are very smart about dropping clam shells on paved roads to crack them open.

I am not against animals that communicate, but when they start doing human jobs, such as blacksmithing, my belief in the story suddenly turns off, book closed. So...I might not be your targeted audience. Ten year olds might enjoy it though...

LearningTwoWrite said:

Yeah, it's kids. But how would you describe what we humans call smiling then? (in a 10 year-old's book) Also, on blacksmithing, I know they do it in Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole so I think it might be okay.
I wouldn't want to read it in something adult, though.

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Try reading Watership Down by Richard Adams for an example of anthropomorphized animals that nevertheless behave like animals.

"Adams's descriptions of wild rabbit behaviour were based upon The Private Life of the Rabbit (1964), by British naturalist Ronald Lockley." - Wikipedia

Smiling Ted said:

The more the birds behave like birds, the more interesting the story will be. The more they're just human beings with feathers, the less interesting it becomes.

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This.

I'm not a huge fan of animal fantasy in general, probably because it's so rarely well done.

ETA: as Ted pointed out, Watership Down is a fantastic example of a well-done animal fantasy, and I loved it.

LearningTwoWrite said:

Yeah, it's kids. But how would you describe what we humans call smiling then? (in a 10 year-old's book) Also, on blacksmithing, I know they do it in Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole so I think it might be okay.
I wouldn't want to read it in something adult, though.

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Can you avoid describing it altogether and replace it with some happy bird-behaviour that a ten-year-old can understand?

I was never too thrilled with Ga'hoole, but if you absolutely want your birds to don armour, they might be able to use bones/hides (leather, maybe)/bark/clams/something like that instead of iron or the stuff those owls used. You have birds that weave their nests--surely they can weave together some hides. Because where would they get iron from?

And you totally need some gulls to bomb the Aerial Corps with clams. Totally.

I suggest that you research your birds and see what they can do--and get creative with it. I think even ten-year-olds would find that really cool.

I'd think the bird equivalent of smiling would be that expression they make with their beak open and their eyes half-closed when they are getting their head scratched in a way they really like, or other pleasant sensation.

Social birds like parrots have a number of facial expressions because conveying moods to other flock members is more important than say, eagles, who have limited interactions with birds who arent their mates or young. Most birds rely on a range of vocalizations, such as the chicken example again. Chickens also have a fair bit of feather and body language.

Parrots can and will fluff their cheek feathers in a gesture of friendlyness, though if a human reaches a hand toward them, even slowly, that 'smile' can drop as the bird lunges for you.

So there are some options but you have to pick a species first.

As for tool use, you need to stick to anatomy and psysiology. Some animals could use a little hammer with their feet, but they'd never be able to heave up and slam down enough for blacksmithing. Many birds, including woodpeckers, can do an amazing job with their bare beaks, and might be able to hold a basic 'hammerhead' at the end of their beaks, but all the fine tasks of blacksmithing wouldnt be there. Maybe a team of nutthatches and wrens working with a woodpecker or two...

As was said, watch more birds. There are tons of different ways they use their beaks and feet and sometimes wings (fighting pigeons have a mean left hook. And right hook). Wings are critical for flight or they disapear, as in ratties. Many bird flight shows are highlighting natural bird beha iors and some should be on youtube.

Regardless of ability to hold and use heavy tools for smithing, why would a bird do that? Birds rely on being lighter than other animals for their size to allow them to fly - hollow bones to reduce body weight - it seems like donning metal armour or carrying heavy metal tools would only serve to disable them.

At most I could stretch my mind to encompass birds of prey modifying their beaks and talons with metal edges, or wearing bladed "gloves" and beak guards, but I would need some explanation of how they mined the metal in the first place, and why they couldn't just sharpen their beaks/claws instead.

Indicating emotion through expressions shouldn't be too hard once you know what expressions RL birds use. With the cheek-feather example above, you could just say "Polly's cheek feathers puffed with joy" or similar. Most kids are smart enough to figure out what you're telling them.

Are these birds living in our world, amongst humans, or elsewhere? If they are in our world, and you want tool-using birds, I'd recommend some research into corvids. Those birds are surprisingly advanced tool-users, tool-creators, problem-solvers and communicators.

I can't find the studies right now, but I read of one where corvids were kept in a cage, so they could see and interact through the bars with, but not get up close to, a lone corvid from a different group. The lone bird had learned how to manipulate metal wire into tools, and was set up in a cage that had puzzles for food, which needed wire tools to solve. Similar puzzles were put in the cage with the other corvids, that hadn't been exposed to the wire tools before. Not only did the first group learn through watching the other bird and start using wire tools, but the other bird was seen passing them tools through the bars of the cage.

Elsewhere, corvids have been witnessed performing some pretty impressive feats of imagination, observation and planning to get access to food they normally couldn't take advantage of - nuts. The birds drop the nuts onto a main road, close to a crossing, and wait for a car to run over and break the shell. Next, they go to the crossing and wait for the lights to change and the cars to stop, before hopping over to collect the fragments of shelled nut.

They've done studies with Keas. They make macaws and corvids look like pigeon brains. They can watch and learn or solve complex novel puzzles with ease.

LearningTwoWrite said:

In an animal fantasy about birds, is it totally unreasonable to have them use their wings for anything but flying? To me it is but I wanted opinions. For example, if their culture had a blacksmith, does he have to use hit talons to hold the hammer? Also, birds have beaks and don't really have facial expressions like animals with lips. Can they smile?

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Not at all unreasonable for Middle Grade readers. The mice of Redwall use swords and everyday objects in their world. In Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH the rats build their own secret civilization. Facial expressions and mannerisms are standard fare. One of the newer MG publications is The Familiars.

And it's not just limited to kids. J.R.R. Tolkien used talking spiders, ravens, and trees that marched to war. Story trumps all.

Thousands of books feature animals acting like humans. Anthropomorphism has been a standard of storytelling for thousands of years. That being said, you'll find a lot of people (including agents and publishers) don't like it. But, you'll also find plenty who do.

Write what you'd like to read. Then send it out while you're writing your next book.

LearningTwoWrite said:

In an animal fantasy about birds, is it totally unreasonable to have them use their wings for anything but flying? To me it is but I wanted opinions. For example, if their culture had a blacksmith, does he have to use hit talons to hold the hammer? Also, birds have beaks and don't really have facial expressions like animals with lips. Can they smile?

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The easiest way to get a reader to accept something implausible is to make everything else plausible. A bird doing blacksmithing is implausible (especially eagles, who aren't the smartest). So you don't want to stretch it further by having them use their wings in a way they couldn't.

LearningTwoWrite said:

I was just about ready to give up.

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I think you'd get more useful feedback in the children's forum rather than here, as this one mostly focuses on work for adults. But wherever you go, it's down to you to read books already out there and see how they did it. We can offer our opinions on different approaches, but we can't tell you how to write the book.

Several people suggested you do research and you state you were about to give up?

You've gotten some rather thorough answers to your questions. Utilize them wisely to write a well thought out story or just write whatever you fancy and nature be damned.

Hands are a problem. Any race which uses skilled crafts techniques is going to need some kind of gripping appendage with both fine and powerful control. Could they be telekinetic, using their minds to control matter in small but effective ways?

You don't need facial muscles to convey expression. Many writers use other animal behavior, adapting real-world research in service to the fantastic. Both Diane Duane and Naomi Novik extrapolate avian and reptilian responses to show draconic emotions. In David Brin's THE UPLIFT WAR, the bad guys are bird-like sentients that evolved out of flight. Their 'wings' have become arm-like appendages. They have many 'bird' characteristics, though, which make them both more familiar and more chillingly-alien.

Don't give up. Your pleasant little project just reached its difficult-teenager phase, that's all. This is a sign of growth. Your novel might have the potential to become more than you think, if you just meet it halfway. You recognize that you need to choose between more research (to see what you can logically do) or more creativity. If this is going to be a middle-grade or YA, you can still get away with anthropomorphic animals doing advanced human tasks.

Who cares about crazy? As a writer, your job is to MAKE me suspend my disbelief that avians can do blacksmithing. Phillip Pullman did it with polar bears in the 'His Dark Materials' trilogy. So why not birds? And don't worry about being called 'crazy'. We're fantasy writers. Of course, we're at least slightly insane.

Maybe the birds contract with animals WITH hands (I dunno, raccoons?) to do their manufacturing, in exchange for something only they can provide (aerial intelligence?)

LearningTwoWrite said:

I want to give up because the research says they can't do the things I want them to do, so people will say it's crazy and not believe it.

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So your story is about birds smiling and being blacksmiths instead of birds with personalities and plots?
Why not have the birds doing what they can do within your storyline? The research won't hurt and might give you a better story and unique characters.

I think the key to letting human-acting animals express themselves without becoming too human is to give an animal-appropriate analog. In the Gahool books (not a fan, but I read the first half of the first one) the owls click their beaks to show happiness or pleasure. The author expressed this the first few times with "He clicked his beak happily" or "she clicked her beak with pleasure", and afterwards mentions of beak clicking are known by the reader to be some equivalent to smiling.

In Watership Down, the rabbits thumping their feet was a gesture analogous to slamming a fist down on a table to get attention.

You don't have to abandon a story because birds can't smile; you just need to find a new expression of pleasure that's bird-appropriate. For me, that's half the pleasure of reading a book with an android or a cat as a protagonist--seeing the different ways they view the world and express themselves that are distinctly nonhuman. (But still emotionally relatable to human readers)