by Pajarita » Wed Oct 10, 2018 10:42 am
One of my 'off the walls' theories is that parrots naturally need more happy and reward hormones than other animals and they pluck themselves because of low levels produced in captivity when they are not kept right. As I said, it's an 'off the wall' because I have no scientific base to believe this, just a hunch based on my observations. The way I look at it is: if the happy and reward hormones are released through loving touch/interaction, and parrots are always cuddling, preening, interacting and kissing each other in the wild, it stands to reason that they produce a lot of them all the time and that nature evolved them to produce them and need them in high levels. In captivity, without a mate, a mother/father/siblings or a flock and being left alone for hours and hours and hours every day is bound to have a hugely negative effect on their levels of production - thus, their plucking which causes pain and which, in turn, makes their bodies produce a 'hit' of them [like the little morphine clicker they give you in the hospitals when you had a very painful surgery or whatever]. These hormones have the same effect as morphine on the body and they get addicted to it.