Many times I see that a person with a bird will say that their bird seems to like learning and the very first things that they get in response is that they are placing human thoughts and emotions onto the birds actions and that the bird is simply doing the trick without being asked in the hopes of getting it treat reward anyway.
Unfortunately, I can see this, many times agree with this assessment and have said this same thing myself. But is it always true? Or is it possible that our birds may also derive pleasure from doing tricks and things that we have taught it?
Our birds are self aware beings and they are also intelligent and while these two things appear to me to go together, that is another question. We enjoy doing things and many of them were things that we were taught to do by someone else, but that does not seem to prevent us from enjoying them anyway, so if we concede that our birds have enough self awareness and intelligence to be able to do anything at all simply because they enjoy it, why could they not do the tricks simply because they enjoy doing them?
That is the basis of my question. Do you think that your bird actually enjoys its training, training times and even doing the things we have taught them independently of the rewards that were used to teach them and if so what makes you think so?