Human beings are the only animal that thinks they change who they are simply by moving to a different place. Birds migrate, but it’s not quite the same thing.

Coupland contrasts human self-mythologizing with animal movement. The line suggests that people often treat relocation as a form of reinvention—assuming a new city, country, or landscape will automatically produce a new self—whereas migration in nature is primarily adaptive rather than identity-driven. The comparison to birds punctures the romance of “starting over,” implying that personal change requires more than altered scenery: habits, relationships, and inner narratives tend to travel with us. In Coupland’s broader preoccupations—mobility, modern rootlessness, and the search for meaning in late-20th/early-21st-century life—the quote reads as a skeptical, wry reminder that geography can’t substitute for self-knowledge or transformation.