He played me!

[galeriagila]

Some 20 years ago, the Rickeybird hurt his left (and preferred) foot after a particularly apocalyptic battle with an evil hanging toy that was about twice his size; I banished it thereafter.

So the vet (also a bird lover/owner and a dear friend) looked at him and said he was fine, probably a bit sore, but didn't need anything more than a week's healing or so. He was hesitant to step on it, didn't want to return to the cage perch after I would have him out... I indulged him... went through all kinds of hassle and care and extra love and solicitations and treats to get him to go back on the perch. A few days went by... I was unaware that he was developing a new 'behavior'.

After a week, everything looked fine, but he still seemed "unable" to make that first step with his poor injured left foot. My friend came over and I demonstrated... poor bird just couldn't do it! His foot was paralyzed!!! She took him from me and placed him on the perch with ease. Repeated it. Then I tried... again, his poor 'disabled' foot just couldn't function!

Yep, he was playing me! My friend and I laughed and laughed! He was smart enough to trick ME, but not smart enough to avoid giving himself away with somebody else! Now that I knew what was going on, I pretty quickly got firm with him and the issue was resolved.

But, mannnnnnnn...

He played me!

[Chantilly]

Aah literally laughing out loud! So clever he is! That is very funny and the most adorable thing ever!

[liz]

They train us.

[Wolf]

Well now, if this occurred about 20 years ago and he had your number and name way back then, he should have you pretty well trained by now.

[galeriagila]

If he said JUMP I have no doubt that I would reply... HIOW HIGH?

Yeah, that *was* a long time ago... I may not even be aware of other ways he...
has played/plays/played/will play/might play/could play me!

[Pajarita]

Yep, they are so super smart, aren't they? And they have very recently figured out why they are so intelligent. There is a wonderful new study that looked into 28 species of birds and they found that songbirds, parrots and corvids have brains that are superior to most mammals. They have a much higher number of neurons in the area of the brain that 'does' higher learning and reasoning. It was something like twice as many as primates and four times for rodents (and these are all considered 'smart' species!). They also found that these neurons are smaller and have more compacted connections between them but they don't know why or how they got to be like that so they are planning on studying this to see if they were always like that or if they were normal-sized but 'shrank' in order to allow less weight for flight. Wonderfully awesome animals parrots are, aren't they?!

[Wolf]

Off hand, I would say that the smaller neurons were developed along with the ability to fly. When dealing with electrical connections of any kind and especially in electronics such as computers smaller means faster and the bird would need faster connections in the brain to process all of the information required for flight especially in close formation and in obstacle courses such as through tree tops, just my opinion.

[galeriagila]

Wow...

So fascinating.

Yeah, picturing how flocks fly in such close formation, bobbing and weaving, separating and re-forming... even the Blue Angels, with all their training and state-of-the-art planes can't come close to what birds do. Never really thought about that before.

When the RB is really studying me, he turns his head so that one eye stares at me for 1-2 minutes, then he turns his head the other way so the other eye can stare. I wonder what's going on in that little mind of his.

[seagoatdeb]

LOl...that Rickybird is such a character. Gaugan is really busy training all of us right now. She comes over to me for attention a lot. if Sunny comes over she moves over to preen him. If he lands on me first and wants me to preen him, she flys over and goes over and preens him. Seems like she is making sure that she has the most important realationship from both Sunny and I ......lol

[galeriagila]

It must be challenging at times for a parrot... being in charge of all humans, birds, property and Nature. I can't even imagine...