The Best Girl

idk if i introduced Luna here yet but she was out front last night and i took the opportunity to snap this pic - she’s so freaking cute🥹🥰

why do birds have to be handled with such extreme care? why is their resistance to stress so low? how does it benefit them?

Ultimately it's because they're prey animals and exotics

Increased fragility in the form of heightened stress responses increases odds of survival. If you're jumpy to every sudden sound you're more likely to be the first to flee, if your body is pumping you with adrenaline your hearts going to be pumping fast enough to fuel a quick flight to safety, increased stress hormones means increased awareness which means faster responses to danger and higher likelihood for survival. Needing to survive because everything wants to eat you means you're going to need to be more prone to excessive stress by default.

Birds are creatures of habit and routine, captivity is ever changing work schedules and plans

Birds are heightened listeners, in a typically quiet forest a sudden shuffle is a predator coming for you. Captivity is nothing but machines jolting on and off, TV shows banging, and sudden car horns

(many) parrots survive in large flocks, having everyone else to rely on and take shifts keeping watch. Captivity often doesn't provide more than one or two leaving a solo bird to be on the lookout constantly.

it isn't so much that they're weak to stress, it's that they experience more stress by nature. Parrots are exotics, they haven't been domesticated, they still have every last one of those survival strategies. They aren't built for captive living and as such tend to be living in continuous states of stress as their survival brains combat captivity on the daily. chronic stress is bad even for human beings and does still happen for humans which are designed to live this lifestyle, birds just experience more stress due to their need for survival and as such experience chronic stress easier in this captive setting.

MUSTAAARRDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

This is Eeyore. He’s so happy you’re in the backyard right now. Because that’s where he is too. 

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Aaron Brent Harker

Scent and Sensibility