Bird training- trick progression- new discoveries

[cunningmoss]

We do research on the macaw biology and macaw intelligence. Here, we demonstrate video documentation of our efforts to explore their minds. Our macaws are quite young, but have already progressed to an astounding level.

We demonstrate them able to: Discern 6 different colors so far, 12 different objects so far, 5 different physical tricks, left and right tricks, tool usage, and many other things.

We don't have time to check all the forums, so message us on youtube if you have any questions or thoughts.Promote this if you think it is worth doing and help the results be known.

http://www.youtube.com/user/xBoogieStarx is the video documentation link.

[Michael]

Shame you find it necessary to clip the birds to get them to do what you want. I'm not convinced that the parrots are actually selecting the requested objects rather than trainer bias (such as pointing to the required object or holding that object closer). Now if the parrots can walk over to a variety of objects in multiple trials, random positions, and consistently choose the correct object, would be a different story. Lastly, if you are not really on this forum to actually participate in our fascinating discussions about our beloved psittaciformes, you aren't welcome to use it as an advertising platform.

[cunningmoss]

Oh yeah, their wings must be clipped for them to do what we want, we are so terrible. We only did that so they can play outside. It shows how much you really watched our videos, because there are videos now of them flying around our house. I guess they do that with their wings clipped, right?

Speaking of bias, i think you're using one now. If you care only about forum visits and not encouraging knowledge, then you don't care much about the birds any way. We have shot this from many different angles and with our eyes closed. They do not use eye cues, nor pointing. You can watch our hands.

We do actually plan to post videos of them walking to the objects themselves. The only reason they are not documented yet is because they currently do not consider that a training setting, and treat them like toys if we aren't holding them up.

[GlassOnion]

The whole 'clipped birds can't fly away' is a complete myth. EVERY bird needs to be harnessed.

Have you ever been to www.parrotalert.org ? It's a lost/found birds website in North America. Tons of birds reported to that site are clipped birds. With the right amount of breeze, panic, thermal convection, clipped birds can fly away far enough to get lost.

[cunningmoss]

It's also a myth that harnesses are completely safe. Back when their wings were clipped, we knew exactly how far they could fly. We flew them around every day, and they did their jumping flights. This isn't about flying though, so i'm not sure why you're posting that.

[GlassOnion]

Harnesses are much, much more safe rather than an unrestrained, clipped bird. I only brought it up because I know of people who have lost their large birds due to a false sense of security, and I hope that you are aware of the dangers such practice poses.

[cml]

I know there is a large debate whether clip or not to clip and I dont want to add firewood to the flames, but in my opinion you deprive a bird of who it is by clipping it.
You remove a key element of what makes a bird a bird, regardless of whether they have "limited flight" or not. That if anything must have an influence on their pshyche and that will reflect in their behaviour.

I think it is rather small minded to accuse this forum and its owner of not to care about knowledge, when this is infact a place full of people helping each other. If you just spam forum after forum without the intent of actually staying and contributing to the discussions, then it will be hard for members of those forums to take you or your research seriously.

I havnt watched your videos, but I think it is good with research in these little creatures, but remember one key fact, information is not only empiric tests, graphs and facts, its about how you COMMUNICATE those findings to others. Learn from that so that your work will be noticed and appreciated in the future!