Shadz69
Well-Known Member
andyhinch said:
What is a weatering? I don't need to do research to feel that keeping birds captive is wrong and you base whatever you are trying to say on 'they look happy'.
This is an excerpt from behavioral enrichment for birds in captivity by
Bryan Shao-Chang Wee with reference to other papers.
Traditionally, mammals, primates and carnivores have garnered the bulk of the attention, when discussing the importance of the environment, and enrichment techniques for captive animals. In Markowitz’s [1982] book where he discussed behavioral enrichment applications, only one of the 199 text pages was devoted to birds (King, 1993). It is a fact that birds lack a close evolutionary relationship with humans when compared to the primates, and this perhaps accounts for their presumed lower levels of intelligence. However, the awareness that we are equally responsible for providing enriched environments for birds in captivity is not growing simply because many of us are not looking at the big picture, that a bird is just as important as, say, a large mammal in an ecosystem.
One of the most important misconceptions concerning birds in captivity, in my opinion, lies in the enclosure size, relative to body size. Now, for most carnivores, the enclosure size relative to body size is small, meaning to say that a lion would look pretty cramped in a 40 x 50-foot enclosure. A bird in the same enclosure, on the other hand, would have a much bigger enclosure size relative to body size, even for a large parrot like a Macaw. In short, people tend to think that birds have ‘plenty of space’ because of their relatively smaller size. This however, is far from true. Some birds are migratory, others cover long distances in search of food. Still others have territories marked over hundreds of miles. The size of an animal does not necessarily determine the size of the required space. Rather, it should be dependent on their behavioral needs. Birds also need environments that closely resemble their native habitats to express their behavioral characteristics (Polakowski, 1987).
When this is lacking, birds can end up with a multitude of problems. The absence of certain key stimuli in the physical environment of captive animals can result in failure to express certain behavioral patterns (Thompson, 1996). Based on the theory of natural selection, the rarity of certain essential behavioral patterns may cause these patterns to become gradually ‘phased out’ in a species over a period of time. Research has also shown that animals kept in socially, and physically impoverished conditions tend to develop rigid, unvarying behavior patterns (stereotypic behavior), rather than remaining exploratory and alert to stimuli in the environment (Shepherdson, 1994). Needless to say, stereotypic behavior in confined birds is an indication of poor welfare.
Birds in captivity may exhibit behaviors that give false perceptions of control when their lives are deprived of enrichment. These behaviors serve as outlets for pent-up frustrations, and are usually redirected to other objects or individuals in the aviary. Some ways in which birds stimulate themselves in an impoverished environment would include excessive self-scratching or self-mutilation. I have seen a pair of Golden-capped Conures, Aratinga auricapilla pluck themselves till they were bald. Despite providing fresh browse for the Conures on a daily basis, they continued to feather-pluck incessantly, to the extent of de-feathering their offspring!
Boredom is the psychological response to an environment that fails to meet the animal’s needs for stimulation due to low stimulus diversity (Thompson, 1996). More often than not, birds that are placed in stimulus-poor environments end up with a lowered expectation of the level of stimulatory input from their surroundings. Hence, a preference for little or no change in their environment develops. In addition, birds that are confined to monotonous environments for prolonged periods, are also less likely to engage in active stimulation-seeking behavior, even when presented with the appropriate opportunity. These may help explain why the Golden-capped Conures failed to respond to the introduction of fresh browse. Yet another example of birds providing false perceptions of control would be sudden explosions of aggressiveness among animals that have lived together in apparent harmony. This can be viewed as a redirected response toward an uncontrollable situation. There have been occasions at the Jurong BirdPark when seemingly docile and well-tempered individuals turned upon their aviary-mates with a sudden viciousness previously not displayed.