by Wolf » Tue Mar 08, 2016 10:21 pm
Well, I understand that, but since I don't have any cockatiels to compare the actions with, I can't honestly say. Liz, on the other hand has a whole room full of them and has much more species specific and first hand knowledge and experience with them than I do, so I am really better off by referring you to her for that type of information. I can say that there are many areas that we can come pretty close to knowing what a specific bird is trying to say due to the similarities in their body language, but we also have to leave an area open for not always knowing due to the intracies of the individual bird as well as the variation of the different species. Sometimes without being able to see all of the behavior we may miss a slight variation which totally changes the meaning that they are trying to convey. A simple illustration of this is in the actual mating dance of many of our birds. Sometimes they will perform this dance, not because they are wanting to have sex with us, but because they are so very happy to see us. And even with knowing this from first hand experience, I still often miss the exact differences in their body language that tells the difference which is not something that another bird would miss seeing since it is a major part of how they communicate with each other. While it may look the same to us it may not be the same and that could easily explain the apparent indifference of Rocko to Loki.