WHY is it BAD to express GCC bite HURTS ???

[Michael]

I don't agree. Parrots never bite to get what they want

nice try...

[pennyandrocky]

i'm not the only one he doesn't bite he chose to attack the 2 loud children who visit my house. they want no part of him but he would purposely fly over to bite them since they finally got the message not to scream he doesn't bite them anymore.

[marie83]

I don't agree. Parrots never bite to get what they want or because they want to cause pain. This would imply a hard-wire mechanism for dominance which parrots don't have. The two examples given (children and husband getting bit while owner is not) are not really proving either of these tenets. Pet parrots without bird mates usually bond with one person and would bite anybody they would perceive as threatening or competition for their chosen one's attention and these two example are exactly that.

Ollie was pretty equally bonded the majority of the time spending fairly equal time with each of us when we were both in, he also switched loyalties many times and the biting situation remained the same. the only reason he stopped biting me in the end imo was because I started Michaels approach of none reactions until I figured out the various reasons for the biting. As I said I don't believe that biting is a normal behaviour but I believe it is certainly a learned one, you can teach almost any animal to do things with the right reinforcement.

[Pajarita]

Yes, I agree with that. You can certainly teach an animal a bad behavior that is not natural to it but that doesn't imply they do it to get something or to cause pain.

The thing with parrots biting is that people usually do not perceive themselves as doing anything 'wrong' or not been able to read their body language and I think that's what these two explanations came from. It's a bit of arrogance (it's not me, it's the parrot) combined with a bit of anthropomorphism (I would do this if... so it stands to reason that the parrot is doing it because of that, too). People talk about understanding parrots but the truth is that it's very hard for us to do this because they are soooooo very different from us so, in the absence of avian insight, we all tend to look for human reasons in their behaviors. I've been keeping multiple parrots (over 240 when I had the rescue) for over 20 years and I've observed parrots in the wild and I've never seen a single one bite another one to get something they wanted (unless it was over a hen) or to cause pain. Quite the contrary, they are very empathetic, generous, forgiving and incredibly stoic when it comes to not getting what they should.