In 1918 Rafael Karsten, the earliest professional ethnographer to work among the Shuar discovered what for him was an odd practice: “It is common that at the great feasts the women address their songs to certain beautiful birds of the forest, which are then personified and spoken to.  Among these birds the toucan (tsukanga) the cock-of-the-rock (sumga), the pugi (mashu), and the wild turkey (kuyu) play the principle roles, and the dancing women address them, giving them all sorts of pet names, praising their brilliant plumage, their walk, etc.”

Birds play an outsized role in Amazonian culture. To a much greater degree than in European cultuer they dominate stories, songs, art and humor.  This is in part because they dominate the soundscape.  When people lived wihout electricity, at great distances from each other and it was the birds that most broke the silence with their plaintive cries. and calls. Unlike people shaped by Judeo-Christian human exceptionalism or the evolutionary paradigms of science Amazonian people assumed that the birds who made these sounds were expressing language and emotions similar to their own. The diversity of their species and sheer numerical presence in proximity to humans was simply much greater and more obvious than that of mammals.   Because the birds were believed to be human in beginning times they were assumed to have human like consciousness and motives.