Could say the same thing for people, I find remote work super isolating sometimes.

Yeah, the whole idea of keeping birds seems painfully sad to me - taking creatures that have this amazing power of natural flight, with agency to explore vast landscapes and see amazing things, and then keeping them inside (and/or sometimes with clipped wings).

And added to that how difficult it can be for long-lived birds when their caretakers die and they can be left with somebody who doesn't really like them (or whom they don't really like), or donated to a zoo... a family friend's parrot was given to a (very good) butterfly house when she died and he just seems so sad every time I see him now

Maybe I'm just being narrow-minded, and the exact same thing is true for dogs & cats

It’s why the symbolism of caged birds is a recurrent literary device for a long as the history of literature.

Do you feel differently about fish who can swim?

No fish is so intelligent as the simplest bird.

I would not bet my money on it. In some areas fishes can score higher than many other vertebrates for sure, including big apes

Anybody keeping an aquarium knows that many fishes are surprisingly smart. Specially predatory fishes. They have a good long term memory and can recognize individual caretaker humans.

The brain/bodyweight ratio of some species is bigger than humans. This mean that they have a bigger brain that most birds, lizards and rodents of the same size. Sharks are pretty clever for example.

A very good question - I do feel differently about fish, and I think it's the relative level of intelligence.

As you suggest, it's clearly not just because birds have an ability to explore an environment natively that humans don't.

I'm sure that's a bias towards similarities with human intelligence - to communicate, solve puzzles, and use tools (e.g. crows and parrots) because it would be very sad if people were regularly keeping octopuses in home fish tanks.

For those like me who thought clipped wings meant exactly that, at least from what I have learned it usually just means removing 1 or 2 large feathers at the wing tips, not amputating an actual part of the wing.

Maybe this is obvious to everyone else but for me this thing seemed way worse than it actually was.

For some pet parrots, yes, flight feathers are trimmed as they come in to temporarily prevent or reduce flight, but traditionally, ducks and geese being raised for meat and feathers do have part of the outside wing joint removed to permanently prevent flight - this is called pinioning.

At least they won't be hungry, getting fed more than they would eat on their own [0]. That seems to be called gavage.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force-feeding

While that's good to hear, what disturbs me about clipping wings is robbing a bird of their ability to fly

As long as they're not fully clipped, they can still fly, but they don't get a ton of lift. Parrot owners typically do it so they don't accidentally fly outside and end up in a worse situation than a few clipped feathers that grow back in a few months. Birds get spooked by the most random things, so it's hard to know what will trigger them to fly into danger

Fully clipping their flight feathers is cruel, dangerous and can result in injury when a bird falls more than a few feet. Also causes muscle atrophy and makes the birds dependant on their humans

The one I saw flew fine, for short distances and indoors at least.

Domestic cats are another story. Mine actually prefers inside and is not very social even with other cats. Prefers solitude, sleep, cuddles and eating. My dog, on the other hand, a 70lb Husky mix requires a great deal of activity outside as well as socialization with his pack of friends from the dog park. 2+ hours of physical activity and socialization a day keeps him happy but, you have to be a responsible pet owner, listen to your pets and give them everything they need and more. Your pet shouldn't just be surviving, they should be thriving. It's your responsibility.

They're not "pets", they're "animals". And social function is one of their primary instincts.

But as long as we force them to be pets, they're in fact meant to be raised alone in homes. And they compensate for it by bonding with their owners, which are away most of the time.

It's casually cruel, but also I don't think there's such a construct as "pets outside with pet friends". Ideally we'd just let nature handle itself and we stop trying to productize it as home decoration & entertainment.

We have several birds, they mostly like the company of other some other birds. But they really like people too. Even the ones always raised around birds grow attached to their people.

It's much more complex than "leave animals to the wild". One of our birds is a rescue and had found himself a new family when he had gotten loose. He clearly prefers people over birds, every time. Even with a wide selection.

Clearly if you are not home most of the time - don't get birds. But if you are, they are quite good companions if you are also up for their care. And don't mind losing the occasional keyboard to fun time...

They tend to be quite happy when they have some even small space to fly and extensive contact with both their people and others birds. I'll often have two on me while coding, by their choice. The others have other preferences for time use.

When they get out, and it's happened a few times. They very much prefer to be back in their home with their clearly loved social circle.

Flying is nice, it's fun and good exercise, but it's also a means to an end. Being with those they love, finding food, toys, and nesting sites.

Do you have any durable evidence to back up those anecdotes?

My best summary from years of experience and observations and learning from several birds. Learning to read their likes and dislikes. Also exposure to others who do the same, bird people.

It is what it is, whatever you may choose to call it. You may also take it or leave it.

The preference of people over birds is not a good sign. Usually means he wasn't well socialized or even misimprinted. Breeders do that intentionally because people want people-focused parrots. But it's not good for them.

Sometimes that damage can be undone with very careful training and resocializing...

I don't think interaction with people is bad for parrots, but it shouldn't be their only means of scratching their social itches.

Don't know his history. He is clearly old. He doesn't mind other birds, but he loves and takes great delight in people. Just who he is.

Sure, there's history there. But I don't see it as "damage". He is clearly quite happy when he is with his people.

His other great delight is figuring out how to open his palace in the morning to get out early. Every time he manages it he struts around for quite a while looking like he just won the Superbowl.

I'm not saying these birds can't be happy. Some certainly aren't resocializeable, and there's nothing wrong with keeping them as happy as possible regardless.

One of the most objective criterion for animal welfare is how much of their natural behavior they can fulfill. People don't talk like birds, don't act like birds. Only parrots of pretty much the same species can fulfill some things. I'm not even talking about mating and all the behavior around that, more like everything else.

> I'm not saying these birds can't be happy

That's pretty much the only criteria I'm really interested in.

All our birds have other birds of the same species with them, which they all do enjoy I can confirm. Well, generally :). When one is being obnoxious to others they can flee to their people.

> The preference of people over birds is not a good sign. Usually means he wasn't well socialized or even misimprinted. Breeders do that intentionally because people want people-focused parrots. But it's not good for them.

How are you deciding what is "good" for a parrot?

A preference for humans is certainly not natural for a parrot. However, I don't think there's anything natural about the way most humans live their lives, and I quite like modern technology. Perhaps parrots also appreciate being in a safe environment with loving caretakers. (Or perhaps they don't—but I don't see how we could know either way.)

Put another way, I'm not convinced that living in the wilderness and having to scrounge for food and avoid predators is necessarily a better life than living with a loving human who cares for you.

Those comparisons are meaningless, because this bird is living in Human care through Human decisions (at some point...).

What is less meaningless is the idea that animals should be able to fulfill the full spectrum of their natural behavior. For parrots that means conspecific company. People don't talk like parrots and don't act like parrots. That is consensus among experts, by the way.

It is sad. Mainly our approach to other animals is based on disregarding their right to self actualization. Merely saying this makes one seem like a kook or zealot. But it's just pointing out that taking a human-centric approach to other intelligent organisms is easy to do because we are the apex predator. I don't blame or judge anyone but it disturbs me all the same. A thought experiment I really like is how I would feel about doing something if I wasn't part of a group of apex predators. It's simplistic, but personally I find it provides clarity.

Once again, The Onion news was just 10 years too early

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CJkWS4t4l0k

(Sorry low effort comment but I couldn’t resist)

I was expecting this one: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sh3kx9Qa3UU

The very concept of pets is unethical towards animals.

I'm on this boat as well.

Keeping other life captive for your own sporadic amusement is pathologically self-centered.

Adopting injured animals sometimes leaves them dependent. We have an aviary of deceive pigeons. They each have a different issue. Is letting them die kinder?

I’d say that it is sometimes, but it gets complicated fast.

Some animals-turned-pets developed symbiotically with humans, and continued through selective breeding (inevitably, and with mixed virtue).

The classic example is wild dogs to work dogs to pet dogs. I think this is healthy and remains symbiotic.

And the classic example of excess is all the sad breeds developed by bad people, to accentuate some aesthetic values with inadequate regard for the (sometimes life-long) pain and discomfort caused by side effects of the genetic selection.

Agreed on birds though. They are pretty and entertaining, but how can it not be cruel to cage a bird?

Do all those African Grays who amuse and seem to enjoy their humans really just suffer from Stockholm Syndrome?

I don't know, but I don't trust that the humans have thought about it in a non self-serving way.

The initial existence of pet and worker breeds may be symbiotic and natural, but the way people treat them like a slave species and perpetuate them is arbitrarily done for the convenience of humans.

I can’t stand when I see “my fur baby is lost!” when describing the escape of large adult social dog. No, that dog knows how to get home. It escaped its prison.

> I can’t stand when I see “my fur baby is lost!” when describing the escape of large adult social dog. No, that dog knows how to get home. It escaped its prison.

That dog may know how to get home initially and enjoys the freedom having slipped the leash and exploring. But there's no guarantee that when the dog decides it would like to get home that it can, nor is it making an informed decision about the risks that it faces.

I get where you're coming from in the extreme, but animals do get lost or into situations they can't get out of. We took in two stray kittens as outdoor cats and we'd occasionally have to go around the neighborhood to find them because they'd be behind a wall in someone else's yard and forget how to make it back.

As soon as they saw our faces over the wall they'd follow us to an opening or the gate and then find their way home.

Ultimately, one of them met an untimely end from some stray dogs. But that's life.

Say that to dogs, who have co-evolved with humans over thousands of years to a level that not only do they look completely different from wolves, but they can happily digest food that a wolf would starve on.

Dogs like to be with people. Even free-roaming street dogs will usually live in close proximity to people. A well-cared for household dog or cat is one of the most happy, pampered beings who ever lived, often cared for at a level akin to human children.

Absolutist anti-pet thinking is how PETA ends up euthanizing 97% of the pets it receives at its shelter.

My conviction comes from having owned a dog, and realizing after a couple of years that it will never have the life in a pack roaming the lands that it obviously craved (“obvious” after observing its behavior for long enough). I don’t think a healthy co-evolution can be claimed when the animal is not free to act independently, i.e. without being coerced (like being taken on a leash or otherwise physically constrained). I’m more sympathetic to cats as pets, if they can come and go as they please.

Your conclusion may have been correct about your dog, but extending that to all dogs is pretty large and ridiculous leap. Dogs view their people as family members (which is what a pack is), and many other people’s dogs get to have a healthy group of dog friends as well. You sound like a person who just failed to keep a happy dog and developed a rationalization that all dog ownership is morally wrong.

Dog domestication is generally thought to be an example of commensalism, and potentially mutualism. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fvets.2021.6623... In other words, it only happened in the first place because a group of wolves benefited from association with people. Pleistocene hunter-gatherers did not have the physical ability to force a grown wolf to be captive if it did not want to be.

A dog that requires a leash or an active restraint to prevent it from running away is not representative of dog ownership in general. My dog has no interest in running away and the only time I have to use a leash is when it’s imposed by local ordinance.

If your dog wanted to run away it probably had a shitty life.

Different breeds, and different dogs within those breeds, have different drives.

I know some dogs that will gleefully run away and explore the woods if given the chance... and then return sheepishly 20-30 minutes later. If they ever do get lost, or someone else "finds" them, etc, it'll be a tragedy.

My nextdoor feed is filled with run away dogs. I think your experience might be slightly less common than you think.

Survivor bias. Your nextdoor feed doesn’t have posts about the orders of magnitude more dogs that aren’t running away.

For those as confused as I was, Nextdoor: some sort of social thing.

Not a feedlot nextdoor to OP.

It really seems like a trade off. Animals seem “happy” and “free” out in nature, but are they?

They have to be on guard every single second because something might eat them. If they get injured, that is an absolute death sentence. There is no safety net. They have to weather harsh weather conditions. They are at risk for being eaten alive and enduring a slow agonizing painful death by other animals that do not care one iota about their well-being

At least in captivity they are safe. I don’t see how we as humans are all that different in how most of us choose to live our lives

This is true, but an important question is also: does an animal in captivity have the ability to express its fundamental emotional/behavioral drives?

Temple Grandin’s book “Animals in Translation“ is the textbook here, and the short answer is that many species are totally incapable of normal, necessary behavioral expression when held captive. Many animals kept in captivity subsequently develop what are called “stereotypies”, which is a nicer sounding word for mental illness disorders. Parrots very often have this. There are good reasons why parrots are relatively uncommon pets. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14529811/

This is a fundamentally misguided take.

An equivalent comparison would be jailing all humans to keep them safe from each other. Humans having a home for occasional safety from environmental hazards is not the same as free-flying birds being caged in isolation forever.

Maybe we should ask the pets about that, instead drawing random lines in the sand that feel just like parroted BS

Do chicken feel that being the most successful bird in the planet is unfair?

It's actually illegal to import parrots into the United States now. Nearly all the ones that are here are not going to live out in the wild and survive. I see this discussion about freeing them all the time, but that ship sailed when they were taken from their habitat and bred in capitivity. Best we can do is minimize the damage by dissuading ownership and reduce the number bred for pets

That said, I dissuade everyone that tells me they want a parrot from getting one, not for the reason you gave, but because most people treat them like cats or dogs and that doesn't work. They're more like toddlers and approaching them like that usually works better.

I have several smaller parrots I rescued from someone that let them go outside and didn't want them back (conure and some budgies) and they're quite content. They're usually more interested in interacting with my family than each other. I love mine, but they require more attention than most people want to give

They get plenty of open space indoors to fly around, but not every parrot likes to fly. Quite a few would rather climb, because it's a lot of effort to get lift with a bulky parrot body.

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