as an owner I’ve been trying to learn as much as possible the past few years. I’m glad to find there’s a huge amount of advancements in physical health knowledge but I’m curious do organizations/group ever focus on mental health for avian species? I believe it should be just as necessary because of their intelligence. is mental health a focus for research similar to physical health for domestic avian species?
Hi Morgan,
The study of parrot behavior is all about their mental health. Christine Davis pioneered the field of parrot behavior in the 1970’s, and it has been a growing and ever changing field over the decades. We understand so much more about their behavior now, by understanding more about wild parrot behavior. Captive bred parrots are no different than a captive bred lion or tiger or any captive bred wild species. While they are one of the most common exotic pets, any pet that isn’t a domesticated species, such as dogs & cats, is an exotic species and the more that is understood about their wild counterparts, the more we understand their behavior as pets. Everything from how cages are made, how toys are made and how some foods are made is related to their mental health. A good example is our Lafeber’s diets. Dr. Lafeber created the first pelleted food for pet birds, but he and his son, also a Vet, came to understand that pellets could only satisfy a parrot’s nutritional needs. They created a line of nutritionally complete foraging diets in order to offer a diet that provides complete nutrition while also providing the natural foraging exercise that parrots need. In the wild, parrots spend most of their day foraging for their food. As an additional step, foraging activities have been created and now there are many pet bird owners who feed their birds solely through foraging toys and other foraging methods. This is lot of progress from the bowl full of seeds or pellets.
As for formal studies, there are many different studies on parrots to determine their intelligence, such as by Dr. Irene Pepperberg, and this of course gives a peek into their mental health and awareness. Feeding studies were done to develop foraging diets. The studies showed a comparison of how much time a bird with pellets spent eating per day versus how much time a bird with a foraging diet spent and of course the birds that foraged spent a lot more time eating.
Now that more is known about their health, we understand how important exercise – particularly flight – is for pet birds. Now most experts encourage owners to not clip their birds’ wings, based on the bird’s temperament and how secure the home is. If a bird can’t fly, other forms of exercise are encouraged.
So yes, mental health has been a focus as far back as the 1970’s and is a field that continues to grow along with understanding their physical and nutritional needs. The real place we need studies is with wild populations, because the answers we need lies with the wild flocks in their environment – how they live, what predators they face, what exactly they eat, and so on. Most of what we do know is based on very limited observation of just a fraction of the parrot species out there.
Thank you for asking Lafeber,
Brenda
