I wouldn't expect the article to bear any burden of proof until I'd read the actual
study-- most popular magazines don't do a great job of scientific reporting, and their impulse is to find the narrative in things (they also rarely account for soundness of methods or sample size).
I do appreciate you sharing this! And I definitely plan to read the study if I can access it. The article is framing the results of the study by basically reiterating one of the older principles of animal behaviorism: Yes, an animal's ability to thrive in captivity is in some ways linked to their evolved adaptations and behavior in the wild, but maybe not in the ways we'd expect. There isn't a tremendous amount of research comparing how specific traits (brain size, flock size) relate to captive behavior, so I can see why someone thought this doctoral work was article-worthy.
Brain size isn't everything (all my degrees are in the soft, squishy sciences
and command no hard science respect, so I don't know if there are better measures), but I think I'm right to say it is an
objective measure with some useful, well-studied correlations, and so studies will continue to use it. If someone knows whether this marker is outdated in evolutionary biology any what has replaced it, I'd genuinely love to learn more.
“But these days, we have neat statistical tools for identifying why it’s in the nature of some species to be resilient, even thrive, when captive, while others are more at risk of poor well-being”, Professor Mason explained in email. This statistical method, known as phylogenetic comparative methods (PCMs), uses information from the historical
This is the meat-- the way scientists are continuing to refine these statistical tools used to evaluate zoos and captive environments. I wouldn't call PCMs speculative.
"I suspected these birds might be so superbly adaptable that they’d be thriving in captivity too — turns out I was wrong, though.”
This is something I have a LOT of curiosity about-- and I think the speaker is actually agreeing with all of your points,
@camelotshadow. The main point the article extracts from the study is that
behavior that we would term "flexible" or "highly adaptive" in the wild does not directly translate to thriving in captivity, and assuming it does is an example of human error and assumptions about the nature of "intelligence".
Although previous studies found that 10–15% of pet parrots show some form of feather-damaging behavior (i. e.;
ref), the percentage in some parrot species can be much higher. This is the situation for pet African grey parrots,
Psittacus erithacus, a species where 40% of the captive population damages or destroys its feathers, whereas other species, such as pet Senegal parrots,
Poicephalus senegalus, rarely display such destructive behaviors, even when living in similar conditions. Why this difference?
I don't know if these statistics take quality of captive environment into account (the biggest bit of info missing from the article, which assumes-- sadly, maybe correctly-- that most pet parrots are living in sub-optimal environments with sub-optimal diets), but I also think it is important to have studies that
don't just look at ideal environments. I am very curious to know whether some species thrive in sub-optimal (think humane but uninformed caretakers) environments, whether some can ONLY thrive in the most optimal environments, and how that failure to thrive related to the species' behavior in the wild. We can't really understand how individual parrot personalities play a role here without also studying species as a whole. It sounds like this study (like so many studies) is opening up the opportunity for further research. We need LOTS of studies comparing things like species flock dynamics to captive behavior to support studies looking at the impact of individual personality on captive behavior (and there are lots of those two-- I've read a few on budgies that mainly focus on typing neophobic vs. less neophobic budgies and looking for how that does or does not correlate to problem-solving skills).
But we can’t tell whether it’s natural foraging actions that are important to these parrots (spending hours crunching, tearing, pulling), or whether it’s that specific nutrients in their lignin-/chitin-rich natural diets are missing in captivity.
Understanding correlations like this is also EXTREMELY INTERESTING an VITAL to improving animal husbandry! If we could actually establish a more accurate link between wild behavior and diet and maladaptive captive behavior, we can improve husbandry in homes and zoos. I think the article is just introducing this idea to the layperson.
Second, the study also indicated, for the first time, that parrot species with relatively large brains are more likely to exhibit a variety of stereotypic behaviors, particularly repetitively biting at cage bars; head-throwing or head-twirling; or swaying, bouncing or pacing in their cages.
"For the first time" makes it sound like this is the first study to attempt to establish an objective correlation between these two observable traits. I'd have to read the study itself (especially sample size and criteria) before I could dismiss this!
“We think our measure of sociality (flock size) was just too crude to capture the value of the relationships birds have with each other.”
For example, flock size as a statistical measure overlooks the details and nuances of individual interactions and relationships between highly social parrots — relationships that may have been established when these parrots were quite young.
This is just science continuing to refine its markers and tools. This is obviously true of budgies: massive flocks, but different brain size and different kind of social structure to macaws or Quakers.
"Success in captivity" is a quality humans have designated and that evolutionary biology does not account for-- so I always find it interesting to read about the ways our expectations are thwarted and why that might be.