171–180 of 230 posts
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Even prisoners walk back into their cells. Comfort doesn’t erase confinement. A bird’s world is the open sky—so an open door doesn’t make a cage any less of one.
Why do blue tits nest in tiny boxes with tiny holes?
Been to NZ once. Keas are indeed the coolest parrots ever. Climb to the top of Avalanche Peak and you’re guaranteed to see some soaring in the sky, with snowy Mt. Rolleston in the background. Kiwis call them alpine parrots, but they are not. They were common on both islands before Polynesian/Maori hunted many of them, and European ranchers forced them to retreat to high beech forests and alpine zones. Another place i…
Kiwi here. They live in alpine regions, they have adapted to alpine life - how are they not alpine parrots? Go back far enough and you could make this argument about anything.
I work on some aspects of intelligence in birds, primarily in songbirds. There have been some effort finding general intelligence ("g" cognitive factor) in birds since last 15-20 years. The results have been mixed as you would expect. Animals' intelligence have evolved for survival and designing experiments to test those are quite hard. Research has shown brain size matters but not that much, we should look at relati…
My conure is extremely intelligent at times, learning a trick at the second try or doing what I ask him immediately. Most of the time, though, he understands but decides to just ignore me.
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Many animals (including birds, dogs, horses) like the sanctuary and comfort of a cage and choose to use them, but obviously it shouldn't be used like a prison.
How did you arrive at the conclusion that birds like cages?
(I'm personally uncomfortable with birds being caged for long periods or in confined spaces, and I'm not offering the above as a justification. I don't own or live with any animals.)
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it's funny because domesticated cats have much more developed frontal cortexes than their ancestors & it would be one of the things that feral cats lose to genetic drift (meaning, no conservation pressure in the wild). whatever boring stuff we have them do is apparently extremely mentally taxing compared to the wild.
Social interaction may take more mental capacity than hunting and surviving?
Adding to this a chart of neuron count [1] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_n...
I wonder how they count neurons, 11 billion is a lot of counting.
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It’s for the best, house cats torture the birds and frogs around here and I hate it. I never knew frogs could scream.
And generally just tear through native populations of birds and small mammals. I honestly think it's irresponsible to have outdoor cats in places where they're not native (which is effectively everywhere).
My indoor-outdoor cat only catches small animals if they run between her paws. But she did chase a rather large raccoon around the house once, as I did.
In my suburban neighborhood, we occasionally have coyotes. They are known to prey on fat cats (the feline kind).
My feeling is that predation by domesticated outdoor cats is overblown.
I also feel that small wild cats were likely native everywhere. Birds were probably not their primary prey; small reptiles and mammals, i.e. animals that don't fly, nest in trees, or live in flocks.
Makes sense, given that to birds, optimizing for weight is everything. But seeing that the ridiculously smart border collies have a comparatively low density of neurons, clearly there’s more to intelligence than that.
I don’t even know how you’d compare their intelligence, it’s so apples to oranges.. Most birds build nests so they have an advantage in tool use and that’s what gets them ahead in some tests. On the other hand, have anyone tried to train corvids to herd other birds/animals? I bet BCs will have an advantage there:)
If you're in tune with animals and spend time around a parrot, it's obvious there is a lot going on in their minds. They have incredible memories and their own understanding of their world. It looks simple to us but they are not simple creatures. That being said, I don't know how a bird lover can keep a bird in a cage.
If you're referring to keeping parrots in cages outside of their natural habitats, that ship sailed when they were brought to non native locations. I'm being hyperbolic, but I assume you don't want them to be released in the wild and die, right? We have some feral colonies set up in places like Miami and San Francisco, but not all species thrive in warm locations. That said, my palm sized green cheek conure is rarely…