Am I the only one to find this sad? It just means parrots are not meant to be raised alone in homes. Pets should be outside, with their own pet friends
And added to that how difficult it can be for long-lived birds when their caretakers die and they can be left with somebody who doesn't really like them (or whom they don't really like), or donated to a zoo... a family friend's parrot was given to a (very good) butterfly house when she died and he just seems so sad every time I see him now
Maybe I'm just being narrow-minded, and the exact same thing is true for dogs & cats
Anybody keeping an aquarium knows that many fishes are surprisingly smart. Specially predatory fishes. They have a good long term memory and can recognize individual caretaker humans.
The brain/bodyweight ratio of some species is bigger than humans. This mean that they have a bigger brain that most birds, lizards and rodents of the same size. Sharks are pretty clever for example.
As you suggest, it's clearly not just because birds have an ability to explore an environment natively that humans don't.
I'm sure that's a bias towards similarities with human intelligence - to communicate, solve puzzles, and use tools (e.g. crows and parrots) because it would be very sad if people were regularly keeping octopuses in home fish tanks.
Maybe this is obvious to everyone else but for me this thing seemed way worse than it actually was.
Fully clipping their flight feathers is cruel, dangerous and can result in injury when a bird falls more than a few feet. Also causes muscle atrophy and makes the birds dependant on their humans
That said, I dissuade everyone that tells me they want a parrot from getting one, not for the reason you gave, but because most people treat them like cats or dogs and that doesn't work. They're more like toddlers and approaching them like that usually works better.
I have several smaller parrots I rescued from someone that let them go outside and didn't want them back (conure and some budgies) and they're quite content. They're usually more interested in interacting with my family than each other. I love mine, but they require more attention than most people want to give
They get plenty of open space indoors to fly around, but not every parrot likes to fly. Quite a few would rather climb, because it's a lot of effort to get lift with a bulky parrot body.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CJkWS4t4l0k
(Sorry low effort comment but I couldn’t resist)
But as long as we force them to be pets, they're in fact meant to be raised alone in homes. And they compensate for it by bonding with their owners, which are away most of the time.
It's casually cruel, but also I don't think there's such a construct as "pets outside with pet friends". Ideally we'd just let nature handle itself and we stop trying to productize it as home decoration & entertainment.
It's much more complex than "leave animals to the wild". One of our birds is a rescue and had found himself a new family when he had gotten loose. He clearly prefers people over birds, every time. Even with a wide selection.
Clearly if you are not home most of the time - don't get birds. But if you are, they are quite good companions if you are also up for their care. And don't mind losing the occasional keyboard to fun time...
They tend to be quite happy when they have some even small space to fly and extensive contact with both their people and others birds. I'll often have two on me while coding, by their choice. The others have other preferences for time use.
When they get out, and it's happened a few times. They very much prefer to be back in their home with their clearly loved social circle.
Flying is nice, it's fun and good exercise, but it's also a means to an end. Being with those they love, finding food, toys, and nesting sites.
It is what it is, whatever you may choose to call it. You may also take it or leave it.
Sometimes that damage can be undone with very careful training and resocializing...
I don't think interaction with people is bad for parrots, but it shouldn't be their only means of scratching their social itches.
Sure, there's history there. But I don't see it as "damage". He is clearly quite happy when he is with his people.
His other great delight is figuring out how to open his palace in the morning to get out early. Every time he manages it he struts around for quite a while looking like he just won the Superbowl.
One of the most objective criterion for animal welfare is how much of their natural behavior they can fulfill. People don't talk like birds, don't act like birds. Only parrots of pretty much the same species can fulfill some things. I'm not even talking about mating and all the behavior around that, more like everything else.
That's pretty much the only criteria I'm really interested in.
All our birds have other birds of the same species with them, which they all do enjoy I can confirm. Well, generally :). When one is being obnoxious to others they can flee to their people.
How are you deciding what is "good" for a parrot?
A preference for humans is certainly not natural for a parrot. However, I don't think there's anything natural about the way most humans live their lives, and I quite like modern technology. Perhaps parrots similarly appreciate being in a safe environment with loving caretakers. (Or perhaps they don't—but I don't see how we could know either way.)
Put another way, I'm not convinced that living in the wilderness and having to scrounge for food and avoid predators is necessarily a better life than living with a loving human who cares for you. Both are certainly imperfect in different ways, but unfortunately we can't ask the parrots which one they would prefer.
What is less meaningless is the idea that animals should be able to fulfill the full spectrum of their natural behavior. For parrots that means conspecific company. People don't talk like parrots and don't act like parrots. That is consensus among experts, by the way.
Keeping other life captive for your own sporadic amusement is pathologically self-centered.
I’d say that it is sometimes, but it gets complicated fast.
The classic example is wild dogs to work dogs to pet dogs. I think this is healthy and remains symbiotic.
And the classic example of excess is all the sad purebred dogs, developed by bad people to accentuate some aesthetic values with inadequate regard for the (sometimes life-long) pain and discomfort caused by side effects of the genetic selection.
Agreed on birds though. They are pretty and entertaining, but how can it not be cruel to cage a bird?
Do all those African Grays who amuse and seem to enjoy their humans really just suffer from Stockholm Syndrome?
I don't know, but I don't trust that the humans have thought about it in a non self-serving way.
And don't get me started on zoos... :(
I can’t stand when I see “my fur baby is lost!” when describing the escape of large adult social dog. No, that dog knows how to get home. It escaped its prison.
That dog may know how to get home initially and enjoys the freedom having slipped the leash and exploring. But there's no guarantee that when the dog decides it would like to get home that it can, nor is it making an informed decision about the risks that it faces.
As soon as they saw our faces over the wall they'd follow us to an opening or the gate and then find their way home.
Ultimately, one of them met an untimely end from some stray dogs. But that's life.
Dogs like to be with people. Even free-roaming street dogs will usually live in close proximity to people. A well-cared for household dog or cat is one of the most happy, pampered beings who ever lived, often cared for at a level akin to human children.
Absolutist anti-pet thinking is how PETA ends up euthanizing 97% of the pets it receives at its shelter.
Dog domestication is generally thought to be an example of commensalism, and potentially mutualism. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fvets.2021.6623... In other words, it only happened in the first place because a group of wolves benefited from association with people. Pleistocene hunter-gatherers did not have the physical ability to force a grown wolf to be captive if it did not want to be.
If your dog wanted to run away it probably had a shitty life.
I know some well-trained dogs that will still gleefully run away and explore the woods if given the chance... and then return sheepishly 20-30 minutes later. If they ever do get lost, or someone else "finds" them, etc, it'll be a tragedy.
They also tend to come back covered in thorns, with cut-up paws, etc, etc.
Not a feedlot nextdoor to OP.
They have to be on guard every single second because something might eat them. If they get injured, that is an absolute death sentence. There is no safety net. They have to weather harsh weather conditions. They are at risk for being eaten alive and enduring a slow agonizing painful death by other animals that do not care one iota about their well-being
At least in captivity they are safe. I don’t see how we as humans are all that different in how most of us choose to live our lives
An equivalent comparison would be jailing all humans to keep them safe from each other. Humans having a home for occasional safety from environmental hazards is not the same as free-flying birds being caged in isolation forever.
Do chicken feel that being the most successful bird in the planet is unfair?