by Pajarita » Sun Jun 07, 2020 10:08 am
The 12 hours of sleep is an obsolete concept. When we first got parrots (back in the late 60's and early 70's) we used to keep them at a human light schedule (lights on before the sun rises and after it sets) but we realized that they were all screwed up: screaming, plucking, not breeding right, aggressive, etc. So, because back in those days we did not know much about different species, we thought that parrots were all tropical birds and, if there were 12 hours of light and 12 hours of dark in the tropics, then the solution was to do the same thing for the pet ones. This came to be known as 12L/12D schedule and what you are referring to. But, although they were getting more sleep and some (the tropical species) did a bit better, they were still screwed up. As time went by, people learned more about birds in general and parrots in particular (we know more now but, in reality, we haven't even scratched the surface of the tip of the iceberg that represents all the knowledge there is on birds) and one of the things we learned was that all birds are photoperiodic -which means that they regulate their endocrine system by the amount and quality of light they are exposed to. Funny thing is, canary breeders had known about this for a loooooong time (I started with canaries when I was a child, exactly 57 years ago to be precise, and they already knew about this back then and had known it for like 100 years) but, for some reason, there was very little overlap between the two groups -you had people who kept passerines and you had people who kept parrots- so it has taken a loooong time (people are very stubborn, once they learn something, it's hard for them to discard that notion and go in a completely different way -it's called the 'anchoring bias' and one of the tricks our minds play with us) for this knowledge to 'sink in' among parrot keepers (parrot people, even friends of mine, used to make fun of me because I insisted the solar schedule was necessary) and, unfortunately, the wrong information is still out there. So, no, parrots do not need to sleep 12 hours every single night of the year, they need to sleep when it's dark - if this means 14 hours, then it's 14 hours and, if it means 8 hours, they sleep 8 hours. They follow the seasons: long days/short nights in the summer and short days/long nights in the winter. And, yes, even tropical birds need this because a) there is a difference of 20 minutes on the equator from one season to another and believe it or not, birds are able to register this small difference AND b) when kept in a temperate climate light schedule (meaning, longer that 12 hours for the day during the summer and much shorter in the winter), they all revert to using photoperiodism (photo from the Greek word for light and periodism as in seasons) as their first breeding trigger (there are several studies about this that prove it). You see, birds (like all other animals) evolved to breed precisely when it's the best time for them in the habitat they evolved to 'fit in' so you have birds that are long day breeders (the ones that breed in the spring) and long day breeders (the ones that breed in the fall) because the primary environmental trigger for them is food availability, the second being weather. The short day breeders go into breeding condition when the days are getting shorter (which one would think it's counterintuitive as long days would mean a better situation for them) because that is when the weather is mild and the food is abundant -think of countries like India, for example, when the long days bring monsoon weather with constant hard rain and very strong winds that would not allow the birds to go out foraging and the winds are so strong that they end up breaking vegetation so plants cannot produce flowers or fruits. But, as the weather is always good inside a human home and there is always food available to them, the ONLY tool we have to keep them from producing hormones all year round, year after year (which is what happens if you keep them at 12L/12D light schedule) is the strict solar light schedule. This is achieved by not exposing the bird to any light prior or during dawn and until the sun is high in the sky or after the sun is halfway down to the horizon and for the rest of the night - because it is the different spectrum that ONLY happens during the two events of twilight every day that turn on or off their internal clock. I always use the same analogy because it's easy for everybody to understand: think of it as a stop watch inside their brains (birds are so dependent on light that they even have photoreceptor cells -cells that 'sense' and react to light- inside their brains instead of just in the eyes like mammals have and you want to hear something really cool? this is so important that the bones in their head evolved to be thin enough to allow light to go through them!). It gets turned on by the light of dawn and turned off with the light of dusk - and the number of hours in between is registered by the master gland. When a certain number is reached (every species has one), the master gland sends hormones to the sexual organs to activate the production of sexual hormones, grow and prepare for reproduction - and, when it reaches still another number (this number is called the point of photorefractoriness), it stops production until the following year, the gonads (sexual organs) shrink in size and become dormant.
As to why people give them toys.... well, they do it because they read that it's good for them and they want to make their bird's life better because they love them. You need to take what you read out there with a large grain of salt and do your own research on it (which does not mean reading things that people post - not even me!- but going to scientific sources) because most of the information posted was originally given to the people who repeated it by breeders, pet store owners or employees and avian vets - and ALL of them have two things in common: they all belong to the pet industry (meaning, the bottom line is not love but money to them) and most of them have not studied much if anything at all about behavior or the natural conditions that these birds live under in the wild. If you observe parrots in the wild, you see that they do not 'play', they simply have natural behaviors that people usually confuse with playing. A bird chewing a toy is not playing with the toy, it's simply satisfying its need to chew or trying to make a nest. A bird beating the crap out of a toy is not playing with the toy, it's simply redirecting aggression. What you do observe in the wild is parrots foraging, bathing, preening and allopreening, nesting, breeding, etc. ALWAYS surrounded by other parrots. Wild adult animals don't have the time or a natural predisposition to play... they need to survive and that is a full time job. When you leave a parrot on its own all day long, you are literally torturing the poor animal with loneliness and anxiety. Parrots evolved to live with other parrots from birth to death and there is nothing more stressing to them than being all alone so, give a parrot a healthy life (diet, light schedule, flight, many hours of out-of-cage, etc), an environment as close to natural as you can make it (natural perches, etc), natural stuff to chew (not plastic or metal) and companionship 24/7/365 and you will have a parrot that might not be 100% happy (impossible in captivity) but will be healthy and content with its life.
Having said all that about toys, I do buy some for mine. I look for toys made out of natural materials like wood, including balsa, dried grasses or yucca, paper, etc that are good for the species itself (like yucca kabobs for the budgies, grass piñata toys for the GCCs, little sticks for the quakers, large pieces of colored wood for the too, etc) and hang them in their cages. They look pretty in their cages (and I am as vain as anybody else about how good my birds cages look) and give the bird something to chew on different than the boxes or rolled up magazines or catalogs they also get. But they do NOT substitute for company and they do not 'make up' for being in jail (which is what a cage is, after all).