a very severe severe

[patti]

this guy bites everyone. EVERYONE. and hard. no one can touch him. people try with him, and then compare war wounds afterwards. every time i come into the store to get a toy or food or whatnot, i try to say hello to him, and he just circles around his perch as if to say "stop standing so close to me" so i usually move on. of the people who work there, he hates them all except for one girl. that is just how he is.

then one day about two weeks ago i said hello as usual and he was pumping his head at me ?!?! so i took advantage of the opportunity to try and connect. i was on vacation last week so i went in a few extra times and spent and hour or two with him here and there. Now after a week and a half he is regurgitating on me, giving me kisses, letting me preen his head, and all sorts of stuff. he really likes me. i don't know what to make of it. people don't know what to make of it. he still hates everyone else. just to prove it, he took a chunk out of my finger yesterday when one of the store regulars - seeing him affectionate with me - reached out as if to touch him while i was playing with him.

I am wondering, what makes a bird so aggressive like this? i know he is afraid, but why? he's (assumed male) is about 2, hand fed and his brother was sweet as pie. one of the people there joked that he was dropped as an egg - but there really does seem to be something going on with this guy, because he is so different than all these other birds raised in the same environment. is it possible to figure out the source of this aggression/fear so that he doesn't have to be like this? is there something about this species that makes them more prone to this kind of behavior?

[Wolf]

It is still breeding season, and he is 2 years old. He is one of the "mini macaws" so I suspect that he may be going through puberty. I don't know a lot about macaws so this is just a guess on my part, but it would explain what you have said about him.

[liz]

If it was a child I would say that it is intelligent to the point of gifted. These children are not easy because they need extra stimulation. You are the only one who gave him respect and attention. You are the only one who gave him something to look forward to besides sitting their bored waiting for the excitement of biting.
It won't be easy but if it were me I would find a way to take him home.

[patti]

oh yes... they really really want me to take him and i would. he clearly wants to come home with me. but i am still working on the downpayment for a house. as soon as i have it the first thing i will do is pick up that amazon across town. then go get him. *then* start packing up my stuff to move. sigh. i have my violin on consignment - maybe it will sell today? but in the meantime, i want to try and help him not be so cranky.

and yes, btw, he is really smart. definately a lot smarter than my lily (no offense, lily).

[liz]

See if you can get them to discount him then put him on a charge card or make payments.

I would be afraid that they would sell him to someone else who will "[i]make him behave.[i]" There are idiots out there who whip their kids for spilling milk.

[Wolf]

Well Patti the subject of bird intelligence reminds me of who is smarter, the mechanic who works on 50 different makes and models of cars and trucks or the doctor who only has two models to work on? There are people who are highly intelligent in one area and totally lost in other fields. Birds are like that to some degree, I think.

[Pajarita]

It's not intelligence, it's chemistry. He liked you and found you at a time when he needs the most affection. As to the causes for his aggression while his brother is sweet... well, for one thing, it appears that neither bird has been DNA'd and who knows what experiences they both went through... On top of that, you have individual personality. But be careful with getting another bird before yours is sexually mature and settled down because birds change as they reach adulthood and yours is still not there. You don't want to end up with two birds at war with each other and with you.

[liz]

I was meaning he needed enrichment. He is bored out of his mind and the more people who see him this way the less chance he has of getting a good home with someone who will take time to understand instead of throw things at him or keep him covered all day.

[patti]

Yes, pajarita... that was the original plan. let lily go through her thing and get to know her as an adult, and then get another bird once she was mature, and i was more settled. and i wanted to get a bird that was itself already mature. so this would be at least a year or more in the future. of course, he wants to come with me NOW. he screamed today when i left him.

i want to but i don't think i should take him home now, for sure. i can't. for now, i have committed to fit some time into my schedule to go to the store and play with him regularly. its close to me so i can do that. i am going to play with him and see what we can do about all this biting. then consider whether or not to take him home at some later date.

wolf, i watched a movie about killer whales and they someone put one through an MRI and found that they have a much more highly developed emotional center than humans do. meaning very highly developed emotional intelligence and even complex language via communication of emotion. i wonder if birds have that too, because that seemed to be the main way we were communicating. i could tell that his thinking process was very different than mine. but i didn't quite understand what is was.... spending more time with him/with birds i would figure that out i guess. freud and piaget developed their theories by studying their own children.

[Wolf]

I really can't say that I know anything about emotional intelligence, as I have never heard of it before. This is not to say that it is not real, just that I am ignorant in this regard. Emotions are rather easy to communicate even between most species of animals especially if you can see them and know a little body language, or if you can hear them as you can nearly always hear pain in their voices and not just physical pain. Then there is empathy both emotional and other types, Science is still back and forth on whether this is real or a figment of our overactive imaginations. Personally, I accept it as real.
We do know that whales' brains and bodies are really quite sophisticated and that they are far more intelligent than humans care to admit, with killer whales, not a true whale, being right up there with the most intelligent. It is not surprising to me to hear that parts of their brain is more developed than some parts of ours. This is true in both whales and birds, as there are several areas of the avian brain that are more developed than ours. In these areas the only thing that I find to be surprising is the stupidity of humans in regards to animals.