Pajarita wrote:I don't think that the size or look of a hand makes a difference to them. They either accept any hand, they only accept certain people's hands or they don't like any hand at all.
As to stress, the problem with it is that, because they are 'programmed' to hide 'problems' (pain, general malaise, depression, etc), we can't really tell when they are stressed out unless wew are talking about super high stress that manifests itself in either acute depression or distress - and that even mild stress takes its toll (we now have studies about this). My biggest problem with stress and parrots is that captivity, even in the best of circumstances (cage-free, flighted, good fresh food diet, solar schedule, flock, etc), already puts them under both physical and emotional stress and, taking into consideration that stress kills, I opt for eliminating any extra and unnecessary stressors to their lives.
People compare a parrot life in captivity and life in the wild and reach the conclusion that life in the wild must be more or equally stressful than captivity because of predators, weather events, lack of food at hand, etc but what they don't take into consideration is that these animals took millions of years evolving to live under those specific conditions and that, throughout the millennia, nature tweaked and tweaked until she could provide them with coping mechanisms for them. To us, it appears that it's moere stressful to live in, say, the Amazonian jungle than to live in a living room in NYC but that's only because the Amazonian jungle is not our natural habitat.
Whilst I so agree with what you say I dont believe any animal would deliberately put itself in a stressful situation. Mine choose whether to interact or not, in thw begining introductions to strangers were carefully managed but the birds still got the choice. Ollie has always been interested in everyone whereas harlie always starts off in her cage and she chooses. Whether to come out and then whether to approach someone. Visitors are told not to approach the birds but to let them come over if they want to, they also know that if they dont like my rules they can leave.
Now if a birds actually attacking someone then imo it is clearly stressed and the whole situation needs a complete re-evaluation and action taken. Things to ask yourself at a minimum are:
Is the bird defending it mate?
Does it hate a certain sex?
Are you allowing the bird choice?
Does the person have a specific appearence that the bird objects to?
How does the person behave around the bird?
How does the person react to the attacks?
How is everyone else feeling and acting towards the guest?
Once you start looking deeper in to a situation the solution may become clearer. For me I prefer not to disrupt my birds routine because someone is visiting, I would look for a solution or consider asking the person who is clearly distressing my birds not to call round or only at times the birds will not have their routines interrupted by keeping them or the guest out the way.
