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Birds have a natural drive to dominate their owners In psychology, terms like dominant, aggressive, and shy are a mix of vague, ambiguous labels and hypothetical constructs. A hypothetical construct is an inferred mental process used to explain the underlying cause of behavior. By definition, constructs are not tangible entities and are best understood as place holders for a time when science reveals more about the way in which our internal and external environments interact with the body’s physiological systems to produce behavior. People say parrots bite because they have an innate need to dominate us; however we know that the environment is involved in all facets of what we do.  In fact, the only evidence that a dominance drive is the underlying mental process that explains biting is the observable behavior itself.  There is no direct measure of dominance drive, because it doesn’t exist as an entity – it’s an idea. Something that doesn’t have a tangible form can’t cause behavior.  To think so is simply unscientific thinking. From a behavior-change perspective, the most relevant cause of present behavior is past consequences.  Here are some examples of how we can use that fact to better understand, predict and change behavior:

Antecedent: Grace offers her hand to Peri;
Behavior: Peri steps up;
Consequence: Grace puts Peri in his cage.

Antecedent: Grace’s offers her hand to Peri;
Behavior: Peri bites Grace;
Consequence: Grace leaves Peri on top of his cage.

Can you predict Peri’s future behavior from the first analysis?  Is he likely to step up more or less in the future, given the consequence Grace provides? How about the second example: Is Peri more or less likely to bite, given the consequence Grace provides?  Which explanation for behavior is more useful for changing Peri’s biting, a dominant mind or past consequences?

A final point: People who use vague labels and hypothetical constructs to describe parrots are producing a Tower of Babel out there. (This is also true about labeling children, but this is an article about parrots.)  We think we know what people mean when they use them, but chances are we don’t have a clue.

To test this theory, I asked the students in one of my parrot behavior classes to list three behaviors a parrot would display if it was labeled an easily “agitated” parrot.  As predicted, they submitted twenty different behaviors (bites, paces, screams, etc) but the really telling piece of data is that only 9 of the twenty behaviors appeared on more than one person’s list!

To the extent that we remove ourselves from describing observable, measurable behaviors, we reduce our ability to understand, predict and change behavior.  So, next time you hear someone describe what their parrot is or has, ask ‘em what their parrot DOES.

Parrots are like 3-5 year old children

To investigate animals’ cognitive ability, Irene Pepperberg studied the learning behavior of Alex, an African Grey parrot. Of course one of the uniquely intriguing characteristics of parrots for this type of research is that many parrots talk in the language of their caregivers. Over 20 years of intensive training, representing tens of thousands of instructional hours, Alex learned to discriminate 50 object labels; five shapes; seven colors; four materials; quantities up to six, and the concepts same/different and bigger/smaller.

For people who thought these skills could only be mastered by humans, or at best great apes, it is a stunning demonstration of animal learning.  As described by Pepperberg, “It is incredibly fascinating to have creatures so evolutionarily separate from humans performing simple forms of the same types of complex cognitive tasks as do young children.” (see http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge126.html).

Even for those of us who hail ourselves as having suspected as much all along, the scientific control of this demonstration allowed us to replace our own fallible common sense with facts.

However, these data also bring to light another important issue for companion parrot caregivers that strikes at the heart of our greatest dilemma: Can we meet parrots’ behavioral needs in our living rooms? On the one hand, the comparison to children makes a striking point: Parrots are not like potted plants that thrive on only water, sunshine and rich soil. They are not décor to accent the subtle hues of our throw pillows.  They are intelligent thinking, emoting, and doing creatures that are built to behave, not to be still.

On the other hand, it is reasonable to suspect that other species of animals can learn similarly stunning discriminations given the same intensive learning opportunity. In fact, I can’t even imagine what a human would learn over 20 years of individualized daily instruction. Thus, the real message transcends the comparison of parrots to children.

It is not an issue of so-called intellectual capacity, lest we replace one kind of speciesism for another. By this I mean, don’t all animals in our care deserve to live stimulating lives, rich with variation, activity, and problems to solve? Or is this standard of living for only those species that learn simple forms of the same types of complex cognitive tasks performed by young children?

There is another consideration, as well. In what way does the frequently exaggerated interpretation that parrots are like 3-5 year old children actually hurt parrots?  How many parrots are relinquished because they didn’t meet people’s expectations as feather kids, (eg did not follow directions, or displayed aggression to strangers)?

For your information, below is a partial list of behaviors characteristic of most 3-5 year old children. The list includes just cognitive oriented tasks. There are scores of other behaviors not on this list from the social and physical skill domains.

• can place objects in a line from largest to smallest
• can recognize some letters if taught
• may be able to print own name
• recognizes familiar words in simple books or signs
• understands the concepts of “tallest, biggest, same, more, on, in, under, and above
• counts one to seven objects out loud – but not always in the right order
• understands the order of daily routines
• speaks in fairly complex sentences, e.g. “The baby ate the cookie before I could put it on the table.”
• asks a lot of questions, including ones on birth and death
• enjoys singing simple songs, rhymes, and nonsense words
• adapts language to listener’s level of understanding
• learns name, address and phone number
• if taught, asks and answers who, what, when, why, and where questions
• continues one activity for 10-15 minutes
• names six to eight colors and three shapes
• follows two unrelated directions
• has basic understanding of concepts related to number, size, weight, colors, textures, distance, position, and time;
• understands immediate passage of time as in what happened yesterday, but does not understand calendar time;
• has long attention span and finishes activities;
• understands and remembers own accomplishments;
• adds “ed” to words (“I goed to the door and put-ed the cat outdoors and “He hurt-ed me.”).

The take-home message is that parrots are not kids and kids are not parrots. As eloquently stated by Marion Breland Bailey, “Every animal is the smartest for the ecological niche in which it lives – if it were not, it would not be there.”

Few of us take the time to learn about parrots’ unique characteristics which are often very different than humans’, and vital to understanding, predicting and influencing their behavior.  Parrots hear, see, digest and even breathe differently than we do.  And of course, kids can’t fly.  In what ways do we fail to meet parrots’ needs because we tend to admire them most when they reflect to us our own image?