Understanding Biting
This week I wanted to talk about bird biting! It is a topic I work with clients a lot on. There are so many misconceptions about parrot biting that it makes my head spin.
I first want to talk about biting behaviors in wild parrots. It is not technically fair to compare wild parrots to captive parrots behaviorally, with their diet, exercise, etc. because they are not living in similar environments and they were raised completely differently, but we can gain a lot of insight from them. In the wild, it is not common for a parrot to bite and break the skin of another parrot (Friedman, 2002). The only time it does happen in on the rare occurrence that a bird must defend their nest and the other bird is not backing down. It is uncommon because parrots have the ability to escape, as well as recognize and understand subtle body language cues. Parrots are eye centric, which means they have very large eyes compared to other sensory organs. Their motion processing system is very large and intense, which is likely why we miss so much subtle body language, or it is hard to detect, and we see more bites in captivity (Dr. Susan Orosz, FLOCK! 2023).
Understanding that, we can look into why it happens in our care easier. Starting easy, we can discuss the environment. Parrots in the wild never have their wings clipped and learn to fledge from their parents. Their life revolves around flight, so they get quite good at it. Parrots are naturally flight instead of fight because of their ability to fly. Since the majority of parrots wings are clipped before they learn to fledge, most do not ever learn. Some people do let them grow out and teach them after about a year for the full molt to happen, but this is not the majority. When parrots are either not confident in flying or can’t at all, they will resolve to use fight mainly instead of their natural responses in a stressful situation. We can knowingly, or unknowingly, put them in those uncomfortable situations leading to an increase of biting.
Also, biting is a learned behavior. I always say once a parrot has learned to bite, it will continue to use it in those situations. Why? Because a bird will quickly learn that biting is a very effective form of communication to get us to move away or leave them alone. Biting usually happens in situations here the bird is afraid. Though it is not the “typical” fear response we think of, it actually is a very typical fear response in animals. Once a bird learns that biting gets us away, they will continue to use it, and it likely will increase. It happens because we are not addressing the fear that is causing this behavior to happen. Usually we need to desensitize ourselves, maybe going into the cage, taking food bowls out, all of which I am covering in my desensitization webinar coming out very soon, but date to be determined. It may be when interacting, so maybe work on desensitizing the hand and step-up training.
It is also good to understand their cage and out of cage sizes. If your bird is in a small cage, even the minimum cage size, they are unable to get away or fly. If they spend a lot of time in the cage, ad even worse if they start to nest inside the cage, then you can see an increase in biting. We are coming into their territory or resource guarding items including a nest, and they have no where to go. They will use biting and other aggressive-type behaviors to remove us from the situation. Smaller cages also can increase frustration and are not very functional of an environment. Most cages, even the minimum size requirements with the correct number of perches and toys, are not big enough for a parrot to fully flap without hitting any cage decorations or the cage itself. They also are not the best for encouraging and allowing the parrot to exercise. A lot of people still are not offering ample foraging everyday for their bird. The environment is not functional to the bird, increasing stress and frustration that may be seen in stereotypical behaviors, abnormal repetitive behaviors, OCD, feather destructive behaviors, etc. Remember, cages are not bad or the enemy, but it is about the cage size and how it is set up that can be challenging.
If a bird is not having their needs met inside their cage, then out of cage time needs to allow them to rehearse everything they can’t inside their cage. I know that not everyone can afford monetarily and space wise a flight cage for their bird. I can’t even for my birds space wise, even though I have the large aviaries, they are not flight cages except a jump flutter. Because of this, I have provided many large play areas for my birds where they can get more energy out, explore, and move in different ways. Buying a 3 foot or so T perch stand is great for training or including your bird more in your life, like eating together, but it is not enough for playtime out of the cage. Parrots need a large and dynamic play area to interact with to meet more of their needs that their cage cannot provide. When it comes to biting, this can have a huge effect. Having a larger play area allows for more choice. Choice aids in decreasing biting behaviors. They can move away if they are uncomfortable if they cannot fly. They can get energy out and rehearse natural behaviors which decreases frustration-related aggression.
Out interactions have the biggest effect on biting behaviors. Knowing how the environment can affect behaviors, it means they are at a heightened state to begin with depending. That means any subtle wrong move could cause a bite when interacting, even if you are interacting correctly. For example, lets pretend that your parrot has a health bar but its their bite bar. It starts at zero, but the bar will fill up as there are contributing factors towards biting. The environment may bring that bar up to pretending 75%. That means when it comes to our interactions, we only have a 25% wiggle room to work with before we get bit. If we set the environment up for success, that 75% will decrease, leaving us more room for possible mistakes before a bite happens. This is called antecedent arrangement, something we talked about I think Friday, or in some other email!
Even if we set the bird up for the most success, our interactions are still the main cause of bites. I will briefly remind you about how parrots process vision differently, allowing them to pick up on these subtle body language cues that we can’t see. This will always be a factor, and even the most experienced trainers or bird caretakers will misread or miss body language. Knowing this, it is top priority that we always focus on our birds’ behaviors. If you have a question about a behavior, recording on your phone to the best of your abilities and send the video to me! I will help you better understand the behavior you are seeing to then know how to go about handling the situation. Even just emailing me a very detailed description of the environment, what happens before you see the behavior, describing the behavior, and what you do after can still give me a good idea to start with to help you. It’s free to reach out and ask for help. I do not want to bleed your wallets; I want to help!
A lot of times, we unknowingly misdiagnose behaviors. We see a bird pacing and maybe swaying their head as “happy” or “dancing” when more times than not the bird is showing stress behaviors. Because we assume the bird is “happy” we then ask it to step up, and then we get bit! Then the term “aggression out of nowhere” comes in. I wrote a blog post about this topic a few years ago where I explain that aggression always has a purpose that you can review here. We cannot anthropomorphize and assume what behavior is because it will usually lead to a biting situation. We need to fully understand behavior that we are seeing, and if you are not confident about it, then you need to proceed with caution till you are able to understand it.
Some people still have the dated mindset of needing to dominate parrots. Parrots have no hierarchy, they do not dominate, and they do not need to be dominated. This mindset creates a cultural fog where it encourages us to continue to use coercive methods and continues our thinking that we need to be the boss of our animals. We should be thinking and treating them as our equals and wanting them to see us in a positive light. Parrots do not distribute height dominance either. Continuing to live in a myth will continue a reality of your bird biting more and more.
Other dated practices include to push into the bird’s abdomen, or when you ask a cue, the bird MUST preform it under any circumstances. Pushing into your bird’s abdomen is negative reinforcement at its worst. I have talked about using negative reinforcement and the benefits of it in some procedures under specific methodology, but it can also be misused like in this way. Pushing into the parrot to get it to step up causes biting to happen and increase when the hand is presented because it is aversive for the parrot to have the pressure on them. I also have found people chasing their birds around to make them step up. Your bird is communicating in the most simple and bold way it can that it is uncomfortable or doesn’t want to. Continuing to harass the parrot will lead to a bite since all other communication was ignored. Parrots do not wish to please us like dogs; birds have the mindset of “what’s in it for me?” There needs to be value to want to perform the behavior. If the bird is not stepping up when asked, especially consistently, then you need to work on training your bird so there is value there, even if a reinforcer is not presented every time (intermittent schedule of reinforcement).
Parrot bites are not apart of having parrots. I do not get bit from my birds; it is rare. I work with birds with aggressive histories, two almost behaviorally euthanized, yet bites are rare. Though I understand the reason for saying this, especially to ward off people who are not serious about caring for a bird but want to impulsively buy one, it still is not a statement I agree with. If you asked me 9 years ago, I likely would have, but that is because I was not as educated in behavior as I am today. Understanding biting behavior is the first step in decreasing it.
Another concept to remember is that the more the bird rehearses a behavior, the harder it will be to fully resolve. Again, once when an animal learns that biting is a very effective form of communication every time, it will use it more consistently, especially is subtle body language is ignored. Crazy Bird is the perfect example of this, and one of the reasons I wanted to work with him. He learned that if he chooses dramatic behaviors, we leave, which takes away the stress causing the behaviors. Since subtle body language was not effective, he stopped showing it all together. Through our desensitization training, he started to not only stop being fearful of people, but he started to show subtle body language, which I listen to every time no matter what. Now, he shows more subtle body language than dramatic. If you are seeing these behaviors becoming a habit, or better yet at the first on sight of these behaviors, you should contact me immediately to start building a training plan and helping decrease those behaviors. If they have been going on for so long, we likely cannot completely stop them from happening. For any bird, you cannot 100% stop biting, but the bird should not be biting when asking to step up for this example. That does not mean that their cant be huge behavioral growth that decreases the behavior significantly. It does not mean that your bird is a lost cause. It just means that there ill be some behavioral management that you need to do that becomes apart of everyday life. I have management for majority of my parrots that influence how I interact with them, when, how, and what signs to look for to change, decrease, or stop all interactions so my bird does not feel like they must bite.
I hope that this helps you better understand biting behaviors in parrots and ideas on how to change them. Biting does not mean anything personal or dictate if you are a good parrot caretaker. Biting behaviors happen for a variety of reasons, even more than I could describe here. Though biting can be apart of parrot care, making it feel normal by having trending phrases can decrease your understanding and modification of the behavior. If you are struggling, feel free to reach out to me! I don’t bite even if your parrot does!
References:
Friedman, Susan G. (2002). Alternatives to parrot breaking- reducing aggression and fear through learning. Presented at the StopPPD Conference 2002