Do parrots feel emotions?

[Michael]

If it's not scientifically proven, then it is not so obvious. If you cannot demonstrate and prove something using the scientific method, odds are far stronger that you're just making it up than it being fact. Why do pet owners desire so strongly that your pet is capable of experiencing emotions? Would it be any less worthy to you if it did not?

[Wolf]

Well, I think that you are wrong about this and just because animals possessing emotions may not have been proven scientifically as of yet, neither has it been demonstrated scientifically that they do not. Fortunately this is a topic that may yet be resolved in our lifetimes as it is beginning to be researched now.
I don't understand why some people are so insecure that they would rather discount the evidences that are shown to them regularly than to admit that this is true. Would they actually be less than what they are were it to be proven scientifically?
I myself have seen enough that I can't deny that all animals are possessed of emotion. I have also heard consistently from some that these actions that I take to be evidence of emotions in animals is merely instinct, but you and I are also animals and the very things that we call emotion in ourselves are also scientifically unproven and are just as likely to stem from the same instincts and biological impulses as seen in all of the rest of the animal kingdom. What is it about you that is proven scientifically that makes you think that you are truly any different than any other species of animal? Where is the scientific evidence that humans have any more emotions than any other animal?

[liz]

Many years ago my father rescued a quarter horse. After being together a long time my father had to be hospitalized for a month. Blaze stayed in the fenced area closest to the house. The day we brought him home we heard a noise at the back door. Blaze got out of his fence and came to see my father. We had to help him get to the door. My father pet him and told him to go back to the field and he did.

One day was really stressful for me. I sat in my chair and put my head in my hands. I looked up because I felt like I was being watched. It was Rachel's dog, Riddick, staring at me. When I told him I was okay he went on and played.

All animals feel fear so why can't they feel contentment. Why would they get attached to us if not for love. They feel all of the emotions. If you don't believe it I feel sorry for you.

[Michael]

EDIT: Let me just point out that this isn't a directed response to you Liz or so specifically to what you said but to the general discussion. Just using a few of your shortened points as a summary for the general discussion.

All animals feel fear so why can't they feel contentment. Why would they get attached to us if not for love. They feel all of the emotions. If you don't believe it I feel sorry for you.

The problem with all of these stories is that individual people are just making them up. They are primarily superstition and anthropomorphism based and not fact. It is more likely that people just remember these coincidental stories because they were going through a rough time than that the animal displayed emotion. Remember, I am not saying that it is impossible that animals feel emotions but rather that it has not been proven and being certain that they do can be harmful.

You can't even know that they feel fear as an emotion. It can just as well be an entirely instinctive or learned response. Likewise contentness may be nothing more than an excitation response to getting something that the animal requires.

Why would they get attached to us if not for love.

Could just be boredom. After being stuck in a cage (that we put them in), they may just show excitation to receiving freedom or attention.

The problem with all of these beliefs, anthropomorphisms, projections, hopes, superstitions, and any other kind of unverifiable postulations is that if you're wrong (and more than likely you are) you may be taking the wrong course of actions. If you purely assume that your pet has emotions but in fact does not, the things you do to/for it may be pleasing to you but may be potentially useless or harmful to the animal.

The best approach is a behavioral one. When you give the animal choice and observe its behavior (whether learned or natural), you are getting a more objective glimpse at how it functions. Reinforcement and punishment are observable phenomena with consistent results. Whether it appeals to the animal's emotions or to an entirely automatic learning response, makes no difference. Positive reinforcement increases behavior and punishment reduces it. If you observe positive reinforcement, then you know that what you are doing can be done more without harm to the animal.

For example if giving head scratches makes the bird feel the emotion of being happy, that's great. However, just making it up in your head that since you gave the bird a head scratch must mean you made it happy is a terrible mistake. You could just as well be making the bird unhappy or upset by doing so. Just because it makes you happy to scratch the bird doesn't mean it makes the bird happy. This appeal to emotions approach is anywhere from useless to a set back. On the flipside, if you use a behavior based approach, it won't make a difference whether or not the bird has emotions. If you develop a hand signal for "I am offering a head scratch" (what I do is wiggle my fingers like I'm about to do it) and the bird walks over to you of it's own free will and bends its head down to accept it, then it is a fact that doing so will be a good thing. Whether it will appeal to a happy emotion or will just satisfy the instinct to receive this won't make a difference. You are still doing something that will elicit similar freewilled behavior in the future.

People who assume their pets are emotional and like to project themselves too much on their pets tend to be much more forceful and presumptuous. They don't really think about what the animal really wants because they assume they know because of a system they made up. "Look at his eyes, he wants a head scratch" is not proof that this is what the bird wants. It's just a human reading their own emotions into the animal and then possibly forcing those unsolicited actions upon it.

Finally, even if parrots were to have emotions, there is nothing to say that they are the same as ours. Since you don't know what real emotions a parrot can have, you just assume they are the same as your own. So even if parrots have emotions but supposing they are different (and quite likely they are since they are birds and are 300 million years of evolutionary history removed from mammals), projecting your assumption that their emotions are like yours again undermines what they would actually be feeling. Birds can see at higher frequencies and see ultra violet. Their perception of the world is already quite different than ours. It wasn't long ago that even this wasn't known. You can't just assume that they have emotions and that if they do that they are the same as yours. There is no proof beyond people's own stories that are only reflections of their own emotions anyway.

PS Just because I am not convinced that parrots have emotions doesn't mean that I don't treat them like they do. Sometimes I talk about them like they do and I talk to them like they do. However, I do not let this dictate my approach or dominate my understanding of them. I take care to appeal to both schools of thought as opposed to limiting myself to one and potentially being wrong. Since we don't know for sure, the behavioral model and a reduced presumption that they have emotions is the safer way and more likely to bring success.

[Wolf]

I contend that they do have emotions and I base it on their behavior and not on my wishful thinking, Is it important to me that they possess emotions? Yes and no, it is important enough to pay attention to but not important enough that it would change my behavior towards them because whether or not they have emotions they are deserving of a certain amount of respect and consideration at least in my viewpoint.

[liz]

Michael I am sorry for you. You are missing so much.

[Wolf]

Earlier in this discussion I posted this link http://www.newworldlibrary.com/ArticleD ... P3JBBs5DIU This article is by Marc Bekoff, PHD, Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at The University of Colorado in Boulder. This is just one of many articles that I have wherein scientists are stating that Animals do in fact have emotions whether or not the perceive or express them the same way that we do, although the majority of them contend that not only do the feel the same emotions as we do but that they indeed perceive and express them in much the same ways as humans do. Even as far back as Charles Darwin, who believed that animals possess the same emotions as we do, we find those who for some unknown reason need to try to place themselves above the remainder of the animal kingdom. That for some unsubstantiated reason, try to separate themselves from that which they actually are, an animal. I don't know, maybe they feel that they are some strange alien species of life that is not from this planet.
Just for fun here is another article that I find interesting https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/an ... ct-so-lame
Enjoy.

[Michael]

Yeah, I looked at that before but it is entirely uninteresting. It's not much different then pet owners' optimism in justifying their pet's behavior with the emotion label than actual proof. These are political papers with agendas and not actual science.

BTW, to everyone, science does not mean it has to be performed by a scientist in a lab coat. All of you can impose a scientific method and mindset in your observations. It starts with a prediction, follows with the discarding of preconceived notions, continues with observation, comes to a conclusion, and follows up with challenges to see if the conclusion holds up.

You can scientifically demonstrate the concept of positive reinforcement to yourself. It doesn't have to be trick training, it can be something as simple as turning a certain way or walking over to a certain spot in the cage. If the consequence of the action leads to an increase in behavior, then you have observed positive reinforcement. This will work over and over again with your bird and you can try it on other people's birds or hear of them trying it to learn the same result. I challenge you to be able to test in this manner any notion of emotions in a defined and reproducible way that relies on the animal's behavior and not your human projection to demonstrate the effect.

Without humans, positive reinforcement still occurs to animals in nature. But I ask, without humans, are animal's emotions apparent or existent? It's a humanistic term and the concepts are based on human emotions. That's to say that even if animals had emotions that they would be anything like human ones? No my friends, you can't know that your pet feels the way you do. It is somewhere between a wild guess and a fairytale.

[Pajarita]

"For example if giving head scratches makes the bird feel the emotion of being happy, that's great. However, just making it up in your head that since you gave the bird a head scratch must mean you made it happy is a terrible mistake. You could just as well be making the bird unhappy or upset by doing so. Just because it makes you happy to scratch the bird doesn't mean it makes the bird happy. This appeal to emotions approach is anywhere from useless to a set back. On the flipside, if you use a behavior based approach, it won't make a difference whether or not the bird has emotions. If you develop a hand signal for "I am offering a head scratch" (what I do is wiggle my fingers like I'm about to do it) and the bird walks over to you of it's own free will and bends its head down to accept it, then it is a fact that doing so will be a good thing. Whether it will appeal to a happy emotion or will just satisfy the instinct to receive this won't make a difference. You are still doing something that will elicit similar free willed behavior in the future.

Michael, you must be kidding me... or maybe you chose the wrong example or I did not understand you correctly. How could you possibly believe that there is the slightest doubt that parrots enjoy head scratches?! Doesn't the fact that mates and close companions do it as a show of affection mean anything? Or what about the fact that they close their eyes and twist their heads so you can reach farther? Or that they ask for it on their own without us getting them used to any hand signal?

I won't argue with the fact that it hasn't been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that animal do feel emotions but, then, it hasn't been proven that people do. We know we do because we can put it into words but, in reality, it's behavior that tells us whether somebody loves, feels fear, anxiety or whatever and, if we go by that, animals show behaviors that point to nothing else but emotion.

And, you are too young to know this but people used to think that animals did not feel physical pain the same way we do and not that long ago, either. But owners knew way before science confirmed it. Same thing with intelligence... it was all those "beliefs, anthropomorphisms, projections, hopes, superstitions, and any other kind of unverifiable postulations" that made scientists look twice at it and now we have been proven right. So, if we look at animal science from a historical perspective and taking into consideration the undeniable trend, I think they will find the proof of animals emotions before too long... because there is such a thing as been more catholic than the Pope when it comes to scientists who believe ONLY what has been proven scientifically and not taking into consideration what common folk, who have the experience they don't, think.

[Michael]

Michael, you must be kidding me... or maybe you chose the wrong example or I did not understand you correctly. How could you possibly believe that there is the slightest doubt that parrots enjoy head scratches?! Doesn't the fact that mates and close companions do it as a show of affection mean anything? Or what about the fact that they close their eyes and twist their heads so you can reach farther? Or that they ask for it on their own without us getting them used to any hand signal?

There are many birds that back away, fly away, or bite to avoid being touched. There are birds that accept touch but still avoid head scratches. My point was very clear. You can't base your approach on emotion thinking it "makes the bird happy" just because it makes the owner happy. Or the owner misreads (or imagines) the animal's emotion and ends up imposing. Behavior speaks far more clearly. And whether the behavior is driven by emotion, instinct, learning, or an unexplainable force, the simple fact is that it actually correlates to a repeatable and definite situation.

When it comes to reading their pet's emotions, everyone seems to just make up whatever they want. Unlike observing behavior, this is largely based on the owner's emotions and not the animal's. You have no idea how many people I have encountered that say their bird likes, loves, or enjoys something (emotion) when the bird's behavior is actually quite the opposite. Same happens the other way when people say a bird hates them. Most of the time it's just the bird avoiding the person's actions (punishment) rather than some sort of emotion that the owner put on it. I disprove their emotional take by using some training and the behavior is solved. If you go on just pretending that it's all about emotions, you get nowhere with these situations. Meanwhile the behavioral approach works regardless of whether there is emotion behind it or not because it appeals to whatever unknown inner state the animal has because results are observable!