Why are some of us good "bird people"?

[Evie]

Why Evie, I LOVE that, thanks for the read!

You're welcome GlassOnion .

Michael, I totally agree with your last point about people misinterpreting their birds' behaviours at times to the detriment of their 'relationship'. My belief that animals (including birds) express emotions has nothing to do with a desire, on my part, to feel 'loved' by my companion animals but rather what I have deduced from 40 years of observation (anecdotal evidence IS useful in scientific investigation) and study of animal behaviour. To look at it simply; any animal that raises young has a valid biological use/need for emotion, without it they would feel no maternal/paternal attachment to their offspring and therefore wouldn't 'care' for them. Whether you label these urges as instinctive or not does not take away from the fact that they are present and must be felt by the animal in order that they are are acted upon. It is more likely that they are felt in much the same way as humans than not since they have developed in the same way and for the same reasons. I don't understand why some people view animals as almost robotic, unfeeling machines (I am not suggesting that this is your opinion, but I have certainly come across many who do hold this view).

[liz]

Sweetie is my oldest and the ornery one. I can see when she is about to do something. I put a dry lima bean in the cage for them to play with. Sweetie gave it that look - went to it and threw it out of the cage bars.

When Twinkle was sick Lemone' sat with her and stayed with her.
Why does Lemone' feed any baby in the cage. He has never had babies but will be the uncle of any.
Lemone' is sensative to the others feelings.

You cannot tell me that Rambo does not have feelings. When my mother was in bed for two years he spent a lot of his day with her even when she did not know he was there.

When Myrtle sits on my shoulder it is usually when I am busy. As I walk through the house she will hold onto my ear in the turns. It happened a lot today. This evening when she grabbed my ear it was already sore from being held. Without thinking I smacked her. She flew to the top of the curtains and told me off for hitting her. When she was all talked out she came back and gave me kisses.

Not only do they have emotions but they are thinkers too.

Rambo wanted in the bathroom. Rachel had pulled the door closed but not latched. Myrtle flew down and bullied the door until she got her head in and just walked it open. When I stopped her they both sat there and grumbled.

You are short changing your birds. They are little beings in their own right.

[Michael]

You cannot tell me that Rambo does not have feelings. When my mother was in bed for two years he spent a lot of his day with her even when she did not know he was there...Not only do they have emotions but they are thinkers too.

Sorry Liz, none of the examples you give prove emotion over instinct/learning. Most of your examples aren't even emotion at all but strictly learning. I do not deny for a second that parrots aren't exquisite learners. But emotion isn't requisite or even complementary to learning. You believe in it so hard and want it to be true so much that it makes sense to you. But seriously, if you try to step away from your desires/bias you'd realize that it is possible to be purely coincidental. It is more likely to be coincidental. It is possible and plausible to be emotion but there is no sufficient evidence to prove it as such.

My belief that animals (including birds) express emotions has nothing to do with a desire, on my part, to feel 'loved' by my companion animals but rather what I have deduced from 40 years of observation (anecdotal evidence IS useful in scientific investigation) and study of animal behaviour.

Key word, belief. That is the antithesis of "scientific." There are tons of cases throughout history where people used anecdotal evidence and life observations to justify anything from genocide and witch trials to fake medicine and witch doctors. In this day and age of knowledge it just doesn't float.

To look at it simply; any animal that raises young has a valid biological use/need for emotion, without it they would feel no maternal/paternal attachment to their offspring and therefore wouldn't 'care' for them. Whether you label these urges as instinctive or not does not take away from the fact that they are present and must be felt by the animal in order that they are are acted upon.

First you claim that emotion is necessary for raising young and then you say it could just as well be instinctive. There is a fundamental difference between the two. Under instinct the animal just does something. For instance there are many kinds of birds that can be raised in isolation and still build a nest characteristic of their species. On the other hand the behavior demonstrated by a hen that lost her eggs may not be in depression/grieving but like the nest building, an instinctive response to try to preserve the offspring (or possibly lack of an instinct for dealing with such circumstance as it does not lead to gene selection and is therefore up in the air for outcome).

Believe me, in my study of psychology it's even difficult to demonstrate true cognition in parrots. But through comparative testing and behavior it's at least somewhat supported. I have a very hard time convincing cognitive capability in parrots to a strict behaviorist psychologist. He'd outright laugh at me if I even mentioned emotions. While the cognitive stuff we can try to define through behavioral study, the emotional stuff is mainly the offspring of human emotion and not objectively empirical study of animal behavior.

It is more likely that they are felt in much the same way as humans than not since they have developed in the same way and for the same reasons.

With over 300 million years in divergence between the most recent ancestor common to birds and mammals, it is highly unlikely that they would have developed emotions or what have you in the same way. For instance there are lizards evolved from that distant relative that you'd be hard pressed to attribute any sort of emotion to even by your standards. They have no social behavior and most or all emotion seems to revolve on a social context. It could be argued that convergent evolution and environment led to something similar in birds but there is no evidence for it.

I have trouble seeing emotion as a necessary or even useful survival tool. More than likely it is nothing more than a byproduct and offshoot of whatever makes humans more intelligent.

[Rokisha]

I have trouble seeing emotion as a necessary or even useful survival tool. More than likely it is nothing more than a byproduct and offshoot of whatever makes humans more intelligent.

I would have to disagree with that Michael. The ability to have emotions does not necessarily make a species more intelligent in my opinion. Once more, if you want to look at it in a scientific route, emotions in general are learned behavior as well as instinctual. Fear for instance.... is an emotion necessary for survival. Fear of death, fear of harm, fear of the unknown is a survival instinct is it not? Humans and many other creatures display fear so that is one thing in common. Now love, be it love of a significant other, child, or family member could be another form of instinctive behavior or learned. Love could be labeled as nothing more then a strong desire to protect, care for, nurture, ect another living being to aid in its survival. Courage... can be labeled as instinctive as well. When someone has the nerve to stand up to or do something dangerous its more often then not related to an instinctive desire to protect, show off, ect. Heck you could label it as part of fight or flight behavior. Now I am no scientist, not studying psychology at a university or taking school lessons to come to this conclusion. I do however study and observe the different behaviors of humans and other animals alike, research plenty of information at libraries or online, and just simply come to my own conclusions about certain things. Of course you could just dismiss my thoughts on the matter as mere rambling since I'm not in college for it if you wish but if I did have the time to go to college again I'm sure I would have the same thoughts and feelings as I do now.

[Michael]

The ability to have emotions does not necessarily make a species more intelligent in my opinion.

Not what I suggested. I don't think emotions make intelligence. I suspect emotions are a byproduct of intelligence and unnecessary/unlikely without it.

Once more, if you want to look at it in a scientific route, emotions in general are learned behavior as well as instinctual.

I thought the whole point of emotions is that they aren't behavior but an inner "feeling."

Fear for instance.... is an emotion necessary for survival. Fear of death, fear of harm, fear of the unknown is a survival instinct is it not? Humans and many other creatures display fear so that is one thing in common.

Not at all. The emotion of experiencing fear is completely unnecessary if instinct just says get the heck out of there. When parrots revert to fight/flight reflex it is automatic and difficult to impossible to stop. They don't have to feel fear to have it. They just start lashing their beak out or flapping like mad. On a milder level, you can observe punishment and avoidance of this (as observed on an operant level). Once again it's possible they demonstrate an avoidance of aversive stimuli without ever experiencing an emotion of fear. The behaviors associated with fear (feathers shift, rising heart rate, etc) may be a reflexive and/or classically conditioned response without any "feeling" of fear.

Now love, be it love of a significant other, child, or family member could be another form of instinctive behavior or learned. Love could be labeled as nothing more then a strong desire to protect, care for, nurture, ect another living being to aid in its survival.

Once again, doesn't prove there is any kind of desire at all (at least in the sense that we feel/understand desires). They may feel no desire to protect, care, or do any of those. They could just do those behaviors. Certain species of bird (Monk Parakeet included to the best of my knowledge) can build a nest without ever learning it. The behaviors to perform are innate. Likewise, nourishing offspring could well be innate. It's an absolutely critical component of natural selection in many species so without it we would not have had the chance to come across that species. So like the nest example, the behaviors necessary for raising offspring may all be innate without any emotion/feeling of love, care, or desire to nurture.

Now I am no scientist, not studying psychology at a university or taking school lessons to come to this conclusion. I do however study and observe the different behaviors of humans and other animals alike, research plenty of information at libraries or online, and just simply come to my own conclusions about certain things. Of course you could just dismiss my thoughts on the matter as mere rambling since I'm not in college for it if you wish but if I did have the time to go to college again I'm sure I would have the same thoughts and feelings as I do now.

I don't think there is any importance of studying something in college to be knowledgeable about a certain subject (sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn't). I appreciate you coming to think about it and put it into words. But I want to strongly caution you about being absolute about something there is practically no objective evidence for. I'd really recommend taking a skeptical/devil's advocate approach and looking at the other side with a clear mind. Believe me, I have come to the understanding I currently present about this with doubt and difficulty as well. But having done sufficient research and discussion on this matter, I've come to realize that there is no evidence that there has to be emotion. Since we cannot prove which animals have emotion and which ones don't (although if you go down the web of life far enough, there will be animals that no one would even suppose could have emotion like a worm or a bacteria). Yet, even "really dumb animals" demonstrate even faint levels of learning. Even a gold fish can be "clicker trained." We can be near certain that there are organisms simple enough to have minimal learning without even the plausibility of cognitive or emotional ability. Once you realize that and the fact that we don't know at which level "emotion" begins, it all falls apart trying to say who has it and who doesn't. Besides humans, no living organism is proven to have emotion. Heck it's difficult to even prove humans have emotion other than taking their word for it by comparing "feelings" in words between each other and agreeing to experience something similar.

There are 3 potential understandings of the dilemma "do parrots have emotions?"

1) No, they do not have emotion
2) Yes, they do have emotion
3) There is insufficient evidence to prove that they do and treat the concept with skepticism as a result and most likely assume that they do not until/unless proven otherwise.

Without evidence that the do have emotion and without proof that they are incapable of it, only leaves with option three as a solid interpretation.

[Munchy]

or... most likely assume that they do until/unless proved otherwise.

Disney has emotions, I can feel them. It's not my desire to feel them, I just do.

There is not a thing anyone can say, no matter how intelligently phrased, or no matter what words are used, to convince me otherwise.

I am always surprised at how many people believe animals have no feelings or emotions. Human beings are animals we give birth just like dogs, horses, and pigs. We are mammals. We are not separate from nature we are a part of it.
The problem is that humans have self centered ideas about themselves in the world. We did used to believe the the sun moved around the earth, because we live on the earth everything must revolve around us.

Some people still there believe there is no global warming. Some people believe there was no holocaust. The human mind is capable of believing anything it wants based on the individuals experience in the world.

I'll believe what I have learned in my fifty years on planet earth, and that is that animals have feelings and emotions.

[Rokisha]

The ability to have emotions does not necessarily make a species more intelligent in my opinion.

Not what I suggested. I don't think emotions make intelligence. I suspect emotions are a byproduct of intelligence and unnecessary/unlikely without it.

I'm sorry, I misread your post.

Once more, if you want to look at it in a scientific route, emotions in general are learned behavior as well as instinctual.

I thought the whole point of emotions is that they aren't behavior but an inner "feeling."

From what I noticed, some seem to be learned behavior(By learned behavior I mean conditioned feelings based on what one was taught. Such as a white boy growing up to hate blacks because he was taught that way by both parents and others he hung around with. This resulting in him being racist and or prejudice because that is how he was brought up.) while others seem to have that inner "feeling" quality which the inner feeling would be instinctual in my opinion as instinct is pretty much that inner feeling is it not? To me it seems like a combination of both qualities that makes up emotions but thats just my opinion.

Fear for instance.... is an emotion necessary for survival. Fear of death, fear of harm, fear of the unknown is a survival instinct is it not? Humans and many other creatures display fear so that is one thing in common.

Not at all. The emotion of experiencing fear is completely unnecessary if instinct just says get the heck out of there. When parrots revert to fight/flight reflex it is automatic and difficult to impossible to stop. They don't have to feel fear to have it. They just start lashing their beak out or flapping like mad. On a milder level, you can observe punishment and avoidance of this (as observed on an operant level). Once again it's possible they demonstrate an avoidance of aversive stimuli without ever experiencing an emotion of fear. The behaviors associated with fear (feathers shift, rising heart rate, etc) may be a reflexive and/or classically conditioned response without any "feeling" of fear.

This is why I say fear is an instinctive emotion. What we label as fear would be describing the being alarmed by something or having that gut feeling that its dangerous, therefore resulting in the getting the heck out of there instinct right?

Now love, be it love of a significant other, child, or family member could be another form of instinctive behavior or learned. Love could be labeled as nothing more then a strong desire to protect, care for, nurture, ect another living being to aid in its survival.

Once again, doesn't prove there is any kind of desire at all (at least in the sense that we feel/understand desires). They may feel no desire to protect, care, or do any of those. They could just do those behaviors. Certain species of bird (Monk Parakeet included to the best of my knowledge) can build a nest without ever learning it. The behaviors to perform are innate. Likewise, nourishing offspring could well be innate. It's an absolutely critical component of natural selection in many species so without it we would not have had the chance to come across that species. So like the nest example, the behaviors necessary for raising offspring may all be innate without any emotion/feeling of love, care, or desire to nurture.

Which is why i said it could be labeled as such not that it is. Of course we have no way to know for sure. Even the species that are capable of speaking human language are still not taken seriously by humans since most assume it's merely mimicking. The video I posted in the youtube favorites thread with the african grey telling the cockatoo to shut up could be looked at as something it picked up and decided to say by coincidence or it could be looked at as the grey being actually annoyed with the cockatoo and actually vocalizing this through human speech. There is another video i had found and mentioned in one of my posts about two parrots, a male and female, in a box. The male kept biting at his owners hand to drive him away from the female(His mate) and vocalized through human speech that he didn't want them to hurt her eggs. He also said he was the provider. Now that again can be looked at as mere coincidence but it could also prove that other species do indeed have feelings and are capable of trying their best to communicate them with us by any means possible. But we wouldn't know for sure if we continue to dismiss such as mere coincidence and don't take it seriously right?

Now I am no scientist, not studying psychology at a university or taking school lessons to come to this conclusion. I do however study and observe the different behaviors of humans and other animals alike, research plenty of information at libraries or online, and just simply come to my own conclusions about certain things. Of course you could just dismiss my thoughts on the matter as mere rambling since I'm not in college for it if you wish but if I did have the time to go to college again I'm sure I would have the same thoughts and feelings as I do now.

I don't think there is any importance of studying something in college to be knowledgeable about a certain subject (sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn't). I appreciate you coming to think about it and put it into words. But I want to strongly caution you about being absolute about something there is practically no objective evidence for. I'd really recommend taking a skeptical/devil's advocate approach and looking at the other side with a clear mind. Believe me, I have come to the understanding I currently present about this with doubt and difficulty as well. But having done sufficient research and discussion on this matter, I've come to realize that there is no evidence that there has to be emotion. Since we cannot prove which animals have emotion and which ones don't (although if you go down the web of life far enough, there will be animals that no one would even suppose could have emotion like a worm or a bacteria). Yet, even "really dumb animals" demonstrate even faint levels of learning. Even a gold fish can be "clicker trained." We can be near certain that there are organisms simple enough to have minimal learning without even the plausibility of cognitive or emotional ability. Once you realize that and the fact that we don't know at which level "emotion" begins, it all falls apart trying to say who has it and who doesn't. Besides humans, no living organism is proven to have emotion. Heck it's difficult to even prove humans have emotion other than taking their word for it by comparing "feelings" in words between each other and agreeing to experience something similar.

There are 3 potential understandings of the dilemma "do parrots have emotions?"

1) No, they do not have emotion
2) Yes, they do have emotion
3) There is insufficient evidence to prove that they do and treat the concept with skepticism as a result and most likely assume that they do not until/unless proven otherwise.

Without evidence that the do have emotion and without proof that they are incapable of it, only leaves with option three as a solid interpretation.

I do appreciate you at least thinking about what I've had to say and not dismissing it like some others I have met constantly seem to. And yes many species display some sort of intelligence but feelings, emotions, ect could very well be there in the more complex creatures such as parrots, dogs, horses, whales, dolphins, and so on. Now as far as being absolute, I never said I was but I do like to keep an open mind when it comes to these things. Simply dismissing them seems foolish to me. I have looked at the other side of it but it's really hard for me to ignore so many displays from so many creatures that so closely resemble the ability to have emotions.

[Rokisha]

or... most likely assume that they do until/unless proved otherwise.

Disney has emotions, I can feel them. It's not my desire to feel them, I just do.

There is not a thing anyone can say, no matter how intelligently phrased, or no matter what words are used, to convince me otherwise.

I am always surprised at how many people believe animals have no feelings or emotions. Human beings are animals we give birth just like dogs, horses, and pigs. We are mammals. We are not separate from nature we are a part of it.
The problem is that humans have self centered ideas about themselves in the world. We did used to believe the the sun moved around the earth, because we live on the earth everything must revolve around us.

Some people still there believe there is no global warming. Some people believe there was no holocaust. The human mind is capable of believing anything it wants based on the individuals experience in the world.

I'll believe what I have learned in my fifty years on planet earth, and that is that animals have feelings and emotions.

I do agree with that munchy. Some humans have come to what I like to call, a false sense of superiority over every other living being. They make up their mind about something and stubbornly stick to it instead of keeping an open mind and considering all possibilities. There was one woman I know who let her daughter throw around and beat on this kitten they had just gotten. When I told her daughter to knock it off she turned to me and said outright that animals(since she was one who failed to realize humans are animals as well) had no feelings and were put on this earth for kids to torture and play with. At that point I then asked her if she would enjoy being slapped around, kicked, and thrown against furniture because i could and would be more then happy to let her experience it. She turned around and told her daughter to leave the cat alone and both left, leaving the cat at my neighboors. Which both me and this other woman were friends with the neighboor lol. After that she avoided comming over whenever i was there and my neighboor ended up with a new kitten.

[Michael]

or... most likely assume that they do until/unless proved otherwise.

Disney has emotions, I can feel them. It's not my desire to feel them, I just do.

There is not a thing anyone can say, no matter how intelligently phrased, or no matter what words are used, to convince me otherwise.

I am always surprised at how many people believe animals have no feelings or emotions. Human beings are animals we give birth just like dogs, horses, and pigs. We are mammals. We are not separate from nature we are a part of it.
The problem is that humans have self centered ideas about themselves in the world. We did used to believe the the sun moved around the earth, because we live on the earth everything must revolve around us.

Some people still there believe there is no global warming. Some people believe there was no holocaust. The human mind is capable of believing anything it wants based on the individuals experience in the world.

I'll believe what I have learned in my fifty years on planet earth, and that is that animals have feelings and emotions.

Wait, are you being completely sarcastic/ironic or are you actually saying this seriously???

"The problem is that humans have self centered ideas about themselves in the world. We did used to believe the the sun moved around the earth, because we live on the earth everything must revolve around us... The human mind is capable of believing anything it wants based on the individuals experience in the world... I'll believe what I have learned in my fifty years on planet earth, and that is that animals have feelings and emotions... There is not a thing anyone can say, no matter how intelligently phrased, or no matter what words are used, to convince me otherwise."

[liz]

Gee - it's almost feels like we are talking to Dorp.

I feel sorry for Killi and Truman. If they do not have emotions then they are just eating and breathing toys to amuse you.