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@cockatoojohn
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I need to vent.
Someone posted about trying an "alternative" method of getting a bird to stop screaming. It's outdated and just wrong. I'm not going to start a fire on that thread so I'll just vent here.
A Birds natural response to stimulus that scares them, is something they don't like or makes them nervous is to scream to let the rest of their flock know that there is something there that will harm them. To quash a bird using any form of punishment is just wrong. A Bird is not something that should be trained in this way where their natural instincts are taken away from them and they are made to feel scared of doing something natural. It scares me that anyone thinks that it is ok to spray a bird and or use darkness to "punish" the bird, regardless of how much praise/reward/comfort is given afterwords.
I liken this "punishment" to an abusive human situation. If a guy hits a woman that they are in a relationship with, but later makes it up to them with roses, a nice romantic dinner and apologies does not make it right regardless of the stuff that happens afterwords.
All anyone is going to do by disciplining that way is end up with a nervous twitchy untrusting bird that will eventually pluck/mutilate and become overwhelmingly depressed..
The same principles that work to hold a behavior if the reward is good are in play in a punishment situation. Punishment works for the "person" so they repeat it. What they don't see is that it does not work for the animal because the animal still does not know what to do, only what not to do in that moment. The side effects are increased anxiety and increased aggression. Down the road when the bird bites, the person will probably not have any idea why. They will just say that the bird has changed or become hormonal or any number of attempts to blame the bird without realizing how they directly limited the bird's ability to respond to a situation in a behavioral healthy and appropriate way.
When you don't like something what do you do? Do you cry, sulk, get loud, get quiet? You do something that is behaviorally significant in response to how you feel. Birds are no different but people don't ask themselves why. It is easier to punish than to teach. It is easier to do the thing which works the fastest and allows us to release our negative feelings. It seems to work in the moment and we don't connect the dots down the road when a host of side effects present themselves.
It's also used as an acceptable training method for dogs (although there are better ways to do that now too) and following the old-fashioned advice that was predominant among parrot owners for years made up by the same uninformed people who came up with clipping "for the birds safety" or putting a bird in a darkened and/or unfamiliar room to subdue aggression or the totally false height dominance crap and the "parrots can eat the same food as people". Dogs are animals that have been domesticated for over 15,000 years, belong to a hierarchical society that is genetically predisposed to accept authority and obey interaction rules, which have been bred for thousands of generations to establish traits that reinforce their desire to please us. Parrots are not like that.
It's a matter of love. If you really love birds, you will accept them as they are and will not try to change them into something they are not. The right info is all over the place and anybody who has the slightest interest in learning has all the material at their fingertips and if they don't it's because they don't want to.
This will probably fall on deaf ears to those who still live in the stone age but I needed to get it off my chest.
Someone posted about trying an "alternative" method of getting a bird to stop screaming. It's outdated and just wrong. I'm not going to start a fire on that thread so I'll just vent here.
A Birds natural response to stimulus that scares them, is something they don't like or makes them nervous is to scream to let the rest of their flock know that there is something there that will harm them. To quash a bird using any form of punishment is just wrong. A Bird is not something that should be trained in this way where their natural instincts are taken away from them and they are made to feel scared of doing something natural. It scares me that anyone thinks that it is ok to spray a bird and or use darkness to "punish" the bird, regardless of how much praise/reward/comfort is given afterwords.
I liken this "punishment" to an abusive human situation. If a guy hits a woman that they are in a relationship with, but later makes it up to them with roses, a nice romantic dinner and apologies does not make it right regardless of the stuff that happens afterwords.
All anyone is going to do by disciplining that way is end up with a nervous twitchy untrusting bird that will eventually pluck/mutilate and become overwhelmingly depressed..
The same principles that work to hold a behavior if the reward is good are in play in a punishment situation. Punishment works for the "person" so they repeat it. What they don't see is that it does not work for the animal because the animal still does not know what to do, only what not to do in that moment. The side effects are increased anxiety and increased aggression. Down the road when the bird bites, the person will probably not have any idea why. They will just say that the bird has changed or become hormonal or any number of attempts to blame the bird without realizing how they directly limited the bird's ability to respond to a situation in a behavioral healthy and appropriate way.
When you don't like something what do you do? Do you cry, sulk, get loud, get quiet? You do something that is behaviorally significant in response to how you feel. Birds are no different but people don't ask themselves why. It is easier to punish than to teach. It is easier to do the thing which works the fastest and allows us to release our negative feelings. It seems to work in the moment and we don't connect the dots down the road when a host of side effects present themselves.
It's also used as an acceptable training method for dogs (although there are better ways to do that now too) and following the old-fashioned advice that was predominant among parrot owners for years made up by the same uninformed people who came up with clipping "for the birds safety" or putting a bird in a darkened and/or unfamiliar room to subdue aggression or the totally false height dominance crap and the "parrots can eat the same food as people". Dogs are animals that have been domesticated for over 15,000 years, belong to a hierarchical society that is genetically predisposed to accept authority and obey interaction rules, which have been bred for thousands of generations to establish traits that reinforce their desire to please us. Parrots are not like that.
It's a matter of love. If you really love birds, you will accept them as they are and will not try to change them into something they are not. The right info is all over the place and anybody who has the slightest interest in learning has all the material at their fingertips and if they don't it's because they don't want to.
This will probably fall on deaf ears to those who still live in the stone age but I needed to get it off my chest.
None of them punishable by water or darkness though...those types of behavior modifications will either break the bird, break you, or make the problem worse.
