H.Z
Meeting neighbors
- Joined
- 1/23/23
- Messages
- 26
Kiwit has a routine for going back into his cage - he flies inside, hops on his corn cob bridge and rings a bell with his foot (the bell is attached to one of his toys, I know bells can be problematic but we've had no issues so far so I'm leaving it in) and gets a reward. I didn't teach him this. He figured it out on his own but I'm reinforcing it beacuse it makes it really easy to get him back in the cage.
Lately, we have been practicing flying to a stand that is placed on top of the cage and doing tricks on this stand. The stand has been so heavily reinforced that now Kiwit lands on it before getting in the cage and ringing the bell.
One time he landed on the stand and decided not to progress any further so I thought that maybe reminding him of the bell would make him go in the cage. I rang the bell and to my complete astonishment he lifted his foot and stretched it a bit to the right as if he wanted to grab the bell. Since then, I' ve repeated this experiment a couple times and under different conditions. It seems that it only works when he is expecting to get a treat. When I ring the bell right before putting him into the cage or during training sessions he always lifts his foot.
He conditioned himself that when he lifts his foot the bell rings and he gets a treat. But it turns out that he is capable of reversing this thought process to: bell rings -> foot lift -> reward, which (to my knowledge) should not be possible.
He also did something similar during his recall training. I thought I was teaching him that "come" means "fly to me" but instead he interpreted "come" as "I'll get a seed soon". He started saying "come" while playing with his foraging toys. Later he started signalling his desire to forage in a specific toy by flying up to it, touching it and saying "come". Now he actually knows how to say "I want seeds" so he says that along with "come" and sometimes even adds the name of the person whom he chose to serve the seeds
. It got a little out of hand beacuse he "wanted the seeds" constantly. So now it only works when I ask him "Do you want seeds?" and then if he says he wants them we do a training session or something. This bird is scaringly smart and also a stellar talker which is quite uncommon for a green cheek (I mean the talking part, not the being smart part). Sorry I digressed a bit.
I study applied animal psychology. I asked one of my lecturers about this reversing the cause-and-effect chain situation but she had no idea how to explain it. We figured that maybe Kiwit doesn't interpret this as cause-and-effect but rather as a chain of events that need to happen in order to obtain a seed but they don't have to be chronological.
Have you experienced something similar with your birds or any other animals? I'm curious wether this effect is specific to how parrots think.
Lately, we have been practicing flying to a stand that is placed on top of the cage and doing tricks on this stand. The stand has been so heavily reinforced that now Kiwit lands on it before getting in the cage and ringing the bell.
One time he landed on the stand and decided not to progress any further so I thought that maybe reminding him of the bell would make him go in the cage. I rang the bell and to my complete astonishment he lifted his foot and stretched it a bit to the right as if he wanted to grab the bell. Since then, I' ve repeated this experiment a couple times and under different conditions. It seems that it only works when he is expecting to get a treat. When I ring the bell right before putting him into the cage or during training sessions he always lifts his foot.
He conditioned himself that when he lifts his foot the bell rings and he gets a treat. But it turns out that he is capable of reversing this thought process to: bell rings -> foot lift -> reward, which (to my knowledge) should not be possible.
He also did something similar during his recall training. I thought I was teaching him that "come" means "fly to me" but instead he interpreted "come" as "I'll get a seed soon". He started saying "come" while playing with his foraging toys. Later he started signalling his desire to forage in a specific toy by flying up to it, touching it and saying "come". Now he actually knows how to say "I want seeds" so he says that along with "come" and sometimes even adds the name of the person whom he chose to serve the seeds
. It got a little out of hand beacuse he "wanted the seeds" constantly. So now it only works when I ask him "Do you want seeds?" and then if he says he wants them we do a training session or something. This bird is scaringly smart and also a stellar talker which is quite uncommon for a green cheek (I mean the talking part, not the being smart part). Sorry I digressed a bit.I study applied animal psychology. I asked one of my lecturers about this reversing the cause-and-effect chain situation but she had no idea how to explain it. We figured that maybe Kiwit doesn't interpret this as cause-and-effect but rather as a chain of events that need to happen in order to obtain a seed but they don't have to be chronological.
Have you experienced something similar with your birds or any other animals? I'm curious wether this effect is specific to how parrots think.
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