Bird's eye view

They are birds. But they are all too human. Levi Fitze's photograph of King penguins shows a yellow-necked adult standing firm as its furry brown juvenile appears to beg for food. The adult seems bored but resigned to parental duty.

Fitze is one of the medallists in the Bird Photographer of the Year.¹ He faced stiff competition. Antonio Aguti captured a heron swallowing a whole carp. Henley Spiers shot a blue-footed booby diving into a shoalA group of fish swimming together. of sardines. And Nicolas Reusens spied a rare glistening-green tanager delicately stepping out onto a leaf.

The winner was Jack Zhi's dramatic portrait of a peregrine falcon striking down a much larger pelican mid-flight. She did so to protect her young.

Humans often depict nature as an amusing sideshow. But some think that we can learn a lot from animals and plants. Albert EinsteinA German-born physicist, whose work in the early 20th Century revolutionised scientific understanding of the world. once said: "Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better."

One man who agrees is ornithologistAn expert in birds. Noah Strycker. Strycker has seen more birds than almost anyone else.² In his book The Magic and Mystery of Birds, he examines the many parallels between us and our feathered friends.

Strycker shows the lessons birds can teach us. He explores how American nutcrackers bury seeds for the winter in thousands of tiny holes. He looks at the Australian fairy-wrens, who look after each other's children as one big family.

And he describes the incredible albatross, which can fly up to 2,000 miles to pick up food for their children. Albatrosses mate for life. He writes: "I think albatrosses feel love even more intensely than we do."

Love, parenting, communication: it seems there are few things birds cannot teach us. Who needs school when we can learn from nature?

Yet some think that nature cannot teach us everything we need. We can do many things as humans that no other animal can do, whether speaking, reading books or writing computer code. Nature will not teach us any of these things.

And not all lessons nature offers are good ones. John Stuart MillA 19th-Century English philosopher who wrote extensively about freedom and democracy. He is regarded as the father of modern liberalism. wrote that "Nature is cruel and thoughtless." Animal life is one of many violent acts, from fighting over mates to hunting down prey. People who learn only from nature might become brutal to others.

Yes: Sack all the teachers. Nature tells us how to find food, how to build shelters, how to behave to others. If we spent more time copying nature, the world would be cleaner, greener and more sustainable.

No: Nature study is wonderful. But it is limited. Nature is silent on laws and ethics, history and technology, literature and languages. And it is these things which make us truly human, more than animal.

Or... There is no reason we should not have both. Schools can help us learn about nature. Studying the collected wisdom of biologists, for instance, can enhance our understanding of the animals we observe.