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If you're in tune with animals and spend time around a parrot, it's obvious there is a lot going on in their minds. They have incredible memories and their own
by awsanswers 6mo ago
If you're in tune with animals and spend time around a parrot, it's obvious there is a lot going on in their minds. They have incredible memories and their own understanding of their world. It looks simple to us but they are not simple creatures. That being said, I don't know how a bird lover can keep a bird in a cage.
- justonceokay 6mo agoI feel similarly about cats. I absolutely love cats but I didn’t have one for five years because I refuse to own one in an apartment. It seems like people torture animals to make sure that they have some attention when they get home
- deaddodo 6mo agoA decently sized apartment is fine for most cats, psychologically. I don't know where you get "torture" from. What's most important is stimuli such as scratching posts, toys, etc. Otherwise, they're insanely copacetic to the point many "house" cats don't want to leave the home even when being dragged out. Now, putting a dog in an apartment, especially when you're unable to give them constant exercise and attention. That's bordering on cruel. That all being said, every animal has it's own personality. So it's best to match them with an environment that fits their personal needs.
- justonceokay 6mo agoIf you’ve ever had a cat that is adamant about trying to escape you might feel differently.
- appletrotter 6mo ago> That all being said, every animal has it's own personality. So it's best to match them with an environment that fits their personal needs.
- kjkjadksj 6mo agoYeah like “back up from door” not “poor baby just wants to be free.”
- atmosx 6mo agoHave you? I never came across a cat that prefers rain and cold over dry and cold (and pillows and food). But the most cats in houses or apartments I have seen come in and out as they please through specially built doors in roofs, doors or windows.
- dameyawn 6mo ago> A decently sized apartment is fine for most cats, psychologically. And how do you objectively come to this conclusion? Could you say a human prisoner can learn to cope in a prison and present "psychologically" well, but it still feel like a form of torture?
- deaddodo 6mo agoModern house cats are semi-mostly domesticated. They are accustomed to house life and communal company as much as humans are. Same goes for domesticated canines. Your entire comment screams of a PETA ad warning about cruelty to ferrets without realizing that domesticated ferrets literally can and will not survive in nature in 99% of cases. Their "wild" instincts are gone. Cats aren't nearly as helpless, but are similarly co-evolved to domestic life.
- a_t48 6mo agoWhat difference would a house make here? A yard?
- soopypoos 6mo agocats hate stairs
- theultdev 6mo agoI've had cats that love stairs. They'd play and slide down them on purpose. Pretty sure cats love climbing things, and stairs are no different.
- data-ottawa 6mo agoI lived in apartments for a long time then moved into a house. I thought my cat who had never seen stairs would take some adjusting. Nope, he look up them, wiggled his butt, then ran full tilt to the top. Ran full tilt down them too. One of our cats has arthritis and before we got her treatment she didn’t like them, but she’s perfectly happy now.
- saltyoldman 6mo agoso you probably never had cats that run up and down stairs 10 times at 6am.
- akramachamarei 6mo agoCarpetedness may make a big difference in this case.
- justonceokay 6mo agoI have a 3-story ADU (yeah, it’s weird) with access to a forested area behind. One day Seven of Nine might be eaten by a raccoon but I’ve seen the GoPro footage, she has a blast every day of her life. As a side-effect benefit, she doesn’t play games with me because her entire world is filled with games she can play herself. We still sleep curled up together though :)
- soopypoos 6mo agoBut then you did get one?
- nothrowaways 6mo agoYes. After buying a house with a yard, a pool, and a few trees.
- kjkjadksj 6mo agoApartment is no good for a cat but suddenly fine for you? It isn’t like it is in human nature to live in a shoebox either. Human nature is to live in the sahel, sleep under the stars, forage, and track game. The office and the apartment is genuinely a prison for the human in their evolved element.
- justonceokay 6mo agoYes but I can leave whenever I want.
- kjkjadksj 6mo agoCan you? Leave in the middle of every work meeting next month and see what happens.
- justonceokay 6mo agoYou are not arguing in good faith. A work meeting is a commitment I made of my own volition and is only possible because I /can/ leave my apartment. I’ll throw it back at you, maybe if you left that meeting you would find that it had less consequences than you are imagining.
- kjkjadksj 6mo agoThe only one who is arguing in bad faith are the ones equating a cat chilling in an apartment to some form of slavery.
- nandomrumber 6mo agoHow do you go sleeping under the stars when it’s below zero, blowing its guts out, and snowing.
- kjkjadksj 6mo agoLook at how much hair is on your skin, you aren’t meant for that. You are meant to persistent hunt game and forage in fairer weather. You are optimized for that. Everything else is compromised, swimming uphill only bailed out by happenstance technological affordance.
- make3 6mo agoit's funny because domesticated cats have much more developed frontal cortexes than their ancestors & it would be one of the things that feral cats lose to genetic drift (meaning, no conservation pressure in the wild). whatever boring stuff we have them do is apparently extremely mentally taxing compared to the wild.
- SoftTalker 6mo agoSocial interaction may take more mental capacity than hunting and surviving?
- make3 6mo agothey also need to understand human behavior a little bit I guess, & that's pretty complicated (so not just social, social of humans specifically)
- soopypoos 6mo ago"Your Pet Cat Has a Smaller Brain Than Its Wild Ancestors" https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/cat-brains-have-shrunk-with-domestication-180979516/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/cat-brains-have-sh...
- nandomrumber 6mo agomore developed frontal cortexes And smaller brains Aren’t mutually exclusive
- soopypoos 6mo agoYeah it probably shrank as it developed
- CalRobert 6mo agoIt’s for the best, house cats torture the birds and frogs around here and I hate it. I never knew frogs could scream.
- justonceokay 6mo agoLife sucks. I bet the 10s of 1000s of animals used to source the protein in your cat food had a great life though
- CalRobert 6mo agoThey eat crickets funny enough. Anallergic. And as animal production goes the crickets seem happy enough.
- card_zero 6mo agoThere was a prize-winning photo of a lynx doing that to a rat, a few days ago. https://petapixel.com/2026/03/24/wildlife-photographer-of-the-year-peoples-choice-award-2026/ https://petapixel.com/2026/03/24/wildlife-photographer-of-th... Then further down the page, "A sika deer carries the interlocked severed head of a rival male that had died after their battle". Nature, eh.
- stronglikedan 6mo ago> I don't know how a bird lover can keep a bird in a cage I'm convinced that people that keep (uninjured) birds in cages are narcissistic sociopaths. This is based on the conversations that I've had with them about it. Life's too short to deal with people like that. I'm thankful for the indicator to avoid them, but I'm sad that it's at the expense of a bird.
- farkanoid 6mo agoThat seems a bit harsh. I have two rescue parrots that live in large cages (indoors). I let them out every night when I get home from work, and they're given plenty of toys and material (including native blooms) to interact with every day while I'm gone. I buy a couple of pinewood storage crates for them to play in and destroy every month. I also spend over half an hour every morning cleaning all their food and water containers, and cooking them breakfast (sweet potato, corn, fresh apple, assorted greens), I don't even make myself breakfast!
- krona 6mo agoMany animals (including birds, dogs, horses) like the sanctuary and comfort of a cage and choose to use them, but obviously it shouldn't be used like a prison.
- recallingmemory 6mo agoHow did you arrive at the conclusion that birds like cages?
- krona 6mo agoBy watching them, and advice from experts.
- stevenhuang 6mo agoHow did you arrive at the conclusion that they don't?
- recallingmemory 6mo agoI'm not the one making the claim..
- GN0515 6mo agoWell you kind of are, because you're claiming that just because birds willingly spend time in a cage with open doors, it's different than a bird in a locked cage. That's a claim that you're making. So, the question stands, what are you basing that off of?
- leetrout 6mo agoNot OP but of some bird owners I've see that let their birds hang out in their house / on their shoulders and such the birds willingly go to their cage to rest.
- recallingmemory 6mo ago
- tombert 6mo agoThat's kind of how I feel about most pets. I've thought about getting a pet turtle or tortoise [1] because they are my favorite animal, but I found out that in order for them to be happy and healthy they need a lot more room than I could easily fit in my house. Either a very large aquarium or a very large area for them to walk around depending on the species, neither of which I can easily have in my house. And I think a lot of animals are like that. Ultimately a lot of these animals evolved in areas that really aren't that "confined" in any meaningful sense, and forcing confines seems kind of cruel. [1] To be clear, ethically, not one of those shady endangered black market things that you can find.
- colordrops 6mo agoWe adopted three kittens that were found locked into a suitcase and thrown into the trash. Our house is in hills with coyotes so these cats would not survive for any length of time outside. They'd probably also be sent to the pound if we didn't adopt them. I feel bad for confining them in our house but I don't know if there would have been a better outcome for them. Totally agree on more rare/exotic animals though - they shouldn't be subject to unnatural conditions like this.
- emi2k01 6mo agoMy partner and I rescued Ramón, our first cat ever, from outside a convenience store near our house. He was already an adult by the time we met him. We would always see him outside running from stray dogs (I'm from Mexico, specifically from an area with a lot of stray dogs and cat) and, generally, on alert. Now, even if we leave our doors open he prefers to stay inside the house with his little brother Vicente, another cat we adopted. We regularly make new toys and play with them. Vicente has been with us since he was around 1 month old (now 6 months old) so he's way more curious about the outside. We are preparing to start walking them out though I have a feeling we will have to drag Ramón out of the house. I wouldn't feel bad for confining your cats to your house! They are probably very happy :)
- mauvehaus 6mo ago
- tibbydudeza 6mo agoWe have a 3-year-old African Grey - he has 3 cages dotted around the house, but he only sleeps in one which is in our bedroom at night, and we never lock him in even if we leave the house. He knows when we are leaving him when we say goodbye - the garage door opening - the car - the gate opening and closing. During the day he sits in the home office with me and my office days he is around my daughter. Most of the time he sits on the top or the side of the cage perching on wooden sticks. Occasionally he will dismount if the gardening services are busy making a racket with the weed whacker and will walk to the bathroom and climb to the top of the shower. The one cage is close to an outside gate so he will climb on the window or the gate itself during summer. We also have 3 cats, but he just walks past them, and he talks and even scolds them in my voice.
- yareally 6mo agoIf you're referring to keeping parrots in cages outside of their natural habitats, that ship sailed when they were brought to non native locations. I'm being hyperbolic, but I assume you don't want them to be released in the wild and die, right? We have some feral colonies set up in places like Miami and San Francisco, but not all species thrive in warm locations. That said, my palm sized green cheek conure is rarely in his extremely large cage (it's 4 by 4 feet). Door is always open unless he's sleeping or we're out of the house. Usually he's with me on my shoulder when I'm working during the day and gives his "2 cents" when I'm in meetings. Most parrots kept as pets prefer it locked for security reasons. He'll get anxious if it's not when he's trying to sleep. I've seen a lot of terrible bird owners, but I also know plenty that enrich their bird's lives. My little conure has a surprisingly extensive vocabulary for a species not known for speaking. He says "poo" when when he has to poop, "what's up?" when he greets anyone, "whatcha doing", "<his name>", "yeah!" (mimicking Little Jon), "stop" (when he doesn't like what we're doing), "good boy", "Love you" and a few others I can't recall off the top of my head.
- robotpepi 6mo agodid you teach him the words? Mine has learned some just by context (he's still quite young though, barely 2 years old).
- yareally 6mo agoSurprisingly, we didn't really teach him most words and it was through context like yours. Teaching him mostly seems to backfire (i.e. "You want me to say that? Well I'm going to refuse to do it!"). The only one we might have taught him was "peek-a-boo", but even that has context, since he'll say it when we cover his head or we try to hide from him. Sometimes he'll hide behind my laptop, poke his head out and say it when he's trying to get my attention. I guess I did teach him to say "yeah!". It became his alternative to express any excitable emotion instead of screaming. Usually comes with a little head bob at the same time for additional cuteness. He heard the song "Mi Gente" in a commercial once and when they say "yeah yeah yeah", out of nowhere he I hear him respond back with a "yeah!". The first thing he learned was his name, "Willy", and for the longest time I thought he would just be a Pokemon...forever saying his name with different intonations depending on what he was trying to imply. I think he picked that up within his first year or so. Then he learned a few more. After 6 years he might be up to 12-16 now. Could be more, but he says a lot of gibberish that hasn't formed into words quite yet. Perhaps my favorite is when he says he's a "good boy" and he just did something bad. Little jerk knows exactly what he's saying, but we love him anyways. I can't really get him to do tricks yet, other than spinning in a circle. He's highly treat motivated, so anything that results in getting food will usually work if you keep at it. I'm trying to get him to try on a flight harness so we can take him out and about with us more often. He likes people, but he could be more socialized. Guessing you have a green cheek as well? We have a cinnamon variation. I think they're a bit odd, but that could be GCCs in general as we've only had 1 and a budgie.
- paulryanrogers 6mo agoFor those with outdoor cats, please put a bell on their collar. Give the birds a fighting chance.
- bloomingeek 6mo agoThis is really a good deed. As a side note, FWIW, we only let our cats outside when we are there to watch them. This is because we don't want our neighbors to dislike our cats for whatever reason. A lot of neighbors use Roundup on their fence lines. And, of course, car traffic.
- dinfinity 6mo ago> If you're in tune with animals and spend time around a parrot, it's obvious there is a lot going on in their minds. Not saying there isn't and somewhat offtopic, but if you apply this to LLMs those are much, much 'smarter' than all the animals people like to call intelligent (or something similar). If you disagree, please tell me for which task requiring intelligence you'd rather have an animal's wit than that of an LLM. I really do feel we should be taking the current state of affairs as a starting point to recalibrate what counts as smart or worth 'protecting', whether it's our beloved animal friends or something inorganic. Simultaneously believing "birds are super smart" and "LLMs are just stochastic parrots" seems absurd.
- Jensson 6mo ago> If you disagree, please tell me for which task requiring intelligence you'd rather have an animal's wit than that of an LLM. Navigating your way to a location without colliding with anything. Finding food in the woods. Such stuff that animals can do that we yet have AI be able to do.
- gf000 6mo agoMoving a complex system of muscles so that they can just stand upright is already very very complex, let alone intercepting a prey's movement mid-flight by just controlling all those muscles. People way overestimate the actually intelligent part of LLMs vs simply being good at recalling context-related stuff from the training data.
- dinfinity 6mo agoComplexity does not require intelligence. Modern computers (even without AI) and technological systems do incredibly complex things and I'm quite sure you would not call those systems (again, without AI) intelligent.
- gf000 6mo agoThere is a difference between a problem being complex and you try to find a solution to it (hard), vs a program being complex. The latter is trivial to execute, but that is entirely different from analysing it.