Pairing two green cheeks whom both have ownership of me

[seagoatdeb]

Well, that's the thing. I think that it's captivity that does it... It's undeniable that captivity has skewed lots of natural behaviors in parrots. I mean, just the fact that they want to have sex with a human or that they bond with species that are not even remotely similar is super telling, isn't it?

You may be right Pajarita, but a small male dog will try to have sex on its owners leg, when it is kept inside, so wanting to have sex with whats available, isnt that telling to me. The way they act may be an adaption to the process of becoming domesticated. I see it as a process of "evolution" as well as"skewing", so I leave room open for adaptions that improve their experience in a home environment.

Also something I am really interested in is the parrots that love their outings, now outings are usually not on a scheduled routine because they depend on weather and other factors. Gaugan, comes unbelievably "alive" which is the the only way I can think of to describe how happy she is, how chatty she gets, and the adoring look she gets in her eyes as she peppers me with kisses. Some species seem to be the most likely to be the ones that really enjoy outings too. For a large parrot, then an outing is the only place they can have flight, but for my small poi, it is something she just plain loves.

[Pajarita]

Well, the example you gave doesn't really apply because A) dogs have been domesticated for, at least, 30,000 years (some people think it actually goes back further) while parrots are undomesticated. B) dogs are extremely promiscuous to the point that they don't even have a problem with a number of other males having sex with a single female in heat with all of them waiting around for their turn - while parrots tend to be monogamous and mate for life and would not willingly allow their mates to have sex with another bird - C) dogs don't hump people's legs because they want to have sex with them and nobody else like parrots do, they will much rather do it with another dog if they had one available when they are in heat and, last but not least, D) dogs don't 'hump' only as a relief for a sexual need. In most cases it's a matter of dominance, castrated dogs do it, females do it to male dogs as well as to other females, same as male dogs do it to other male dogs.

And, unfortunately, domestication and the adaptations/mutations that are required for a species to become domesticated don't happen just because you take a wild animal and make it live in a human home as we have done with parrots (it would be great if it was that easy because it would give us hope that, one day, pet parrots would have a real good life with us!). It requires generations of genetic mutations, usually guided by what man considers at the time a desirable trait and, when it comes to pet parrots and as far as I know, although there was one breeding facility that claimed to be working toward the goal of domesticating parrots, breeders breed for numbers or color because that is the only thing that apparently is 'desirable' for them. The other question that begs asking is what traits would be considered desirable in parrot? Or, if you will, what would we want to eliminate? This is a good essay on that subject: http://www.birdtricks.com/blog/the-dome ... f-parrots/

But, when it comes to parrots choosing us as their mates, the sad truth is that we are the ones that 'skew' them. We are the ones that take them away from their parents and handfeed them tricking them into imprinting to humans so they grow up thinking that we, humans, are part of their family before they can create a 'bird identity' through their parents. We separate from their siblings as soon as they wean (which we do too early) and other birds of their own species, creating this pitifully dysfunctional human/bird 'flock'. We keep them at light schedules that make them produce sexual hormones all year round, year after year... and we caress them inappropriately.

It's not them and it's not an adaptation to they living in a human home, it's us.

[seagoatdeb]

I am only saying there are other ways to look at it and other explantions. It makes no difference how long dogs have been domesitcated. My reference is that animals have breeding instincts and will practice on who ever is around. Also a dog or a parrot cant really have sex with us. The dog knows that, and the smarter parrot sure as heck knows that too. They know we are not another parrot, they are accepting a mixed flock of humans and parrots. They pick us a a favorite human being, I am not one who believes in the "mate" theory, they are too smart to think we are a mate. We have not even gotten close to seeing why parrots have fit in to our households as well as they have when they have not been dometicated very long. We take all domestic pet animals from their parrents as soon as they wean. Anyway, I know your opinion is already made and I have another opinion, and I am interested always in learning about the adaptions these parrots have made, and helping others to have better realtionships with their parrots. i am also very interested in different species of parrots and how they adapat in a human world.

Yesterday, I took out both my parrots in small cages and my daughter brought over hers in small cages and we all hung out together on my patio.....Gaugan was so excited, that she imediately is playing, saying "woo hoo" hanging upside down...lol..... the rescue Senegal was very happy to be outside and looked so happy, she looked at everything and made sweet sounds, she must have been brought outside by previous owners. Both of the Meyers had to look at everything for 5 minutes before they settled down to enjoy the outside. When there was a hawk circling overhead all the parrots looked up at the hawk watching, except Gaugan who ignored it all as she hung upside down, chewing on a toy, talking a mile a minute in human, and laughing a lot. Every parrot spent a lot of time looking at Gaugan, she is good at being the center of attenion....lol.. She also shows them not to worry.

[Wolf]

This is one of the reasons why we have forums and talk, we all have opinions and sometimes we become too set in them. Sometimes one person will share a thought that another considers to be irrelevant, and in the strictest sense it might be, but for whatever reason it is not irrelevant to the party that mentions it. We talk and talk and talk and opinions remain the same, opinions also sometimes begin to change. Keep talking and maybe someday we can begin to understand more about our birds as well as about ourselves.

[seagoatdeb]

That for sure right Wolf, even avian vetrinary is more or less in its infancy, and there is so much to learn about them. Back when I got my Red Belly, they had not been living with people for a very long time compared to Meyers and Senegals, so very little was know about them, and some breeders were observing them to be shy, reserved parrots. in a few generations Red Belly became to be know as the best talkers of the small Pois, the ones who did not clam up when strangers were around, but instead jabbered away and got excited and became the clowns. One breeder I talked to said she had never seen a parrot species , change so fast upon domestiction. Those of us that get really close to our parrots as companions, really do start to see them on a deep level. Our imput will eventually be taken into acount by science as well as avian vets.

[Wolf]

Well I do agree with Pajarita that parrots are a long way from being domesticated. I also agree that the dog thing was not the best choice for pointing out what you wanted to, but as long as that is what came to your mind when you were trying to point out something then it is up to me to try and understand what you are trying to say and instead of saying that it is not relevant, I should ask for further clarification, if I don't understand.

Both of you want what is best for your parrots in accord with your beliefs and both of you are trying to help others to learn more about these wonderful creatures, so there must be some common ground to start from. It is up to each of us to try and recognize that common ground.

[seagoatdeb]

Dog came to my mind because I used to have the cutest little white toy poodle who i loved dearly and he was an inside dog, and of course he did try the leg.....lol... Almost any animal who is kept inside with humans and going through puberty will try to practice mate with you. So domestication, wasnt, what i was using as part of that example i used.

i have also heard people say that they cant understand their parrots as well as cats and dogs. I can understand parrots better than most dogs and cats. Although, I did have a horse I rescued and she and i were so bonded and close, and i was bonded so close to my little white poodle too. i also had a white cat that i bonded with when I was one year old and she died when i was 15 and i was devastated. Then when i got my first parrot i found i could understand them even more. They brought a whole new demension in with their great intelligence.

In nature parrots would pick a mate, but being intelligent they pick someone they like. Now they would get along as companions except for breeding season when they would mate. Living with humans, parrots still need the most important thing, which is that loyal companion, so they pick a human. in nature, there mates can die and they can spend seasons with no mate when the breeding urge hits, so they have a method to cope with that. In our homes they have to do that all the time, but they dont have the strain of the constant foraging they had to do or the scarcity of food in bad weather years, and so they lose some and they gain some.

Gaugan seems so close to human to me, she is smarter and able to comunicate better than a young human child. Even when i just talk to her, she may not understand every word but she gets the gist of it. Before her the rescue parrots werent as human seeming as her. So this leads me to wondering about differences in species and since all domestication starts somewhere, including our own human one, how different species are in general about being more on the road to domestication. They have changed from their wild state and are adapting to us, I dont see it as much as skewing, although i can see some of it is. Also, some of the reason could be just that Gaugan and i understand each other a lot. But the whole subject facinates me, and i am not satisfied with the often used explantions, but more in observing closely and a lot of thought, and most of all, new ideas and understandings.

Maybe that explains it better and maybe not, because Pajarita often doesnt "get" me and sometimes but not as often you Wolf dont "get me", but this is my attempt to clarify.

[Wolf]

No one always understand another person regardless of the physical form of that other person. But then that is what conversation and communication is all about, at least that is what I think. And that is why we need to listen very closely and not only to what is said but to what is not said. How a thing is said or not said is also of great importance. I may not always understand you but there is no reason for that to interfere unduly as long as we are able to talk and are trying to understand. And in some cases it boils down to a simple understanding that if I am strong enough to allow you to be you and you are strong enough to allow me to be me than we can always come together and be a we.

Personally I do much better with animals than I do with humans as I understand them much better. I am sure that this is not improved by the fact that not everything that I say turns out the way that I intended or that others don't always understand what I am saying in the manner that I meant it.

[Pajarita]

I am a stickler for the 'right' word. My mother was the same so I come by it honestly . I firmly believe that words have power beyond what we normally attribute to them, and that using the right one is absolutely necessary for our minds to be pointed in the right direction. When we talk about companion animals, dogs, cats, etc -but most importantly parrots- I believe it's essential that we really, really understand their behaviors - the 'where they are really coming from'. The fact is that we all attribute reasons to animal behaviors. The most common is our tendency to anthropomorphize them. It's inevitable, we are humans and our point of reference (the 'measuring stick' if you will) is human behavior so whenever we observe a behavior in an animal, we 'search' in our minds for the closest comparison to it out of what we know: human behavior. Whether the reasons people find for the behaviors is the real reason behind it or not is important would depend on the behavior itself as well as our 'reaction' to it. For example, people used to think that parrots flew up high in order to achieve 'height dominance' over us or that they did not obey us because they wanted to be 'flock leaders'- both explanations to these perfectly natural behaviors implied that the parrots were doing something wrong ('He thinks he is the boss') and that one should try to correct them, that they needed to learn 'parameters' of 'acceptable behavior' for their own sake. Needless to say, this was very confusing and stressful to the poor parrots which had no such motives and were just acting the way that nature programmed them to. Misunderstanding behaviors, attributing the wrong reasons for them or using the wrong words to describe them can make a big difference in the way the parrot keeper treats and regards its bird. And that's why, sometimes, I argue with you. It's not that I think that you are going to be treating your parrots the wrong way, I know you won't, but this is, mainly, a teaching site where a lot of people just lurk and read our postings without asking for clarification or, unfortunately, doing an in-depth research themselves so it behooves all of us to present the right information... or, at least, let's say what we know to be the right information at this point in time.

Like I said before, I am a stickler for the right word and, when you use a word like 'adaptation' next to 'domestication' referring to pet parrots, Seagoatdeb, you are using a word that has a specific scientific meaning, namely a biological one: "any alteration in the structure or function of an organism or any of its parts that results from natural selection and by which the organism becomes better fitted to survive and multiply in its environment". Now, I might be wrong and if I am, I would be grateful if you point me to a good link on it, but, as far as I know, pet parrots have not taken a single step toward domestication, they are still genetically identical to their wild counterparts - there has been no biological adaptation. Why? Because, as we are talking of a captive species, natural selection does not exist and, with the exception of the English budgie, nobody has bred parrots to change anything in their genetic make-up.

You are 100% right that domestication has to start somewhere but in every single case, with the possible exception of the dog, all domesticated species became such through man's genetic engineering. It was never a random thing that happened just because a smart wild animal was captured and kept by humans and started adapting to its new environment on its own. It started by man trapping and keeping wild animals captive (much like we do today with parrots) but the domestication process was never random, coincidental or started by a separate individuals of the species realizing a different strategy or behavior was better for them given the captivity conditions. It was done by taking natural selection out of the picture and breeding only the animals that more closely resembled what man had in mind, until, after many generations of them (always tweaking and honing the desirable traits), the goal was achieved. And so, a bird that only produced 2 clutches of 3 - 7 eggs a year ended up producing over 360 (chickens). A 35 to 50 kg animal with straight, shortish brown hair ends up been 100 to 160 kg with white, kinky hair that never stops growing (sheep). An animal that eats sheep ends up been their protector (dogs). There was planning behind all these changes - and the one planning and acting on it was man. There is no planning behind parrot breeding except for more and more color mutations.

Now, you think that some behaviors can have other explanations and that parrots are too smart to want to have sex with us, that they know they can't - but the importance and implications of imprinting are both a scientific fact, not my opinion. Filial and sexual imprinting in birds and other animals has been widely studied for a long time and is 100% accepted as a survival of the species strategy. It is so strong, in fact, that it has been found that male bird babies would look for females that resemble their own mother when it's time to find a mate. It doesn't only happen with parrots or even birds, either, it happens to many species and that's one of the reasons why zoos choose to use artificial insemination in females that were born in captivity and raised by humans - because they reject the advances of the males of their own species and would display sexual behaviors to their human keepers.

See these:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 5408600091
http://www.nature.com/hdy/journal/v82/n ... 5270a.html
https://dangleason.wordpress.com/avian-biology/172-2/
http://wildlifecenter.org/news_events/n ... -surrogacy

I have personally seen this problem in parrots. Maybe you haven't seen it because you seem to have had only small to medium size species and the size seems to make a big difference (I have never seen it in the small birds and that's why I always say that it's easy to get them to bond with another bird) but it happens way too often in the large ones. In the wild, no parrot is going to choose to be with a different species -much less have sex with it- instead of its own but, in captivity, there are many parrots that not only cannot bond with another of its own species but actually feel threatened and scared by them and would rather be with their human and masturbate on him/her than breed and/or interact in any way with the 'strange' animal. And it's this sexual imprinting that happens when the babies are young and been handfed by humans that makes them want to feed their owner (regurgitating) or be fed by him/her (always going into our mouth with their beak) or displays any other type of courtship (dances) or breeding behavior (masturbation) towards them. It's not an adaptation that starts the road to domestication and something to be celebrated, it's a sad side-effect of the human imprinting we did to them when we handfed them as babies.

[seagoatdeb]

It true i have never had a large size parrot, i never felt i had a big enough place for one or could gaurantee, that my place would always be big enough. My experience with them, is helping in a shelter, and so never had the close relationship of a companion parrot with the larger species.

You have example of animals that we have not domesticated, but have bred for food. It is horrible what has beeen done to these animals, and for that reason, i am a raw foodist and mostly vegan, The few times i eat meat it is grass feed free range. i love all animals and want them all treated with respect.

in the very few cases where they have found a human raised by wolves or another species they had become very different from, civilized man. All animals will adapt to their envoronments. I have seen similar things to what you posted many times before, but my interest is more about where we are now and how we improve each parrots life.

If i did have a large piece of property, i would get larger parrots to rehome. I am very saddened by their plight.