Social context influences the vocalizations of a home-raised African Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus erithacus)
Home-raised African Grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus erithacus) exhibit strong social bonding with their human companions. We examined how 1 parrot’s vocal production (speech and nonword sounds) changed with social context with respect to descriptive measures of the vocalizations and their thematic content. We videotaped the parrot in 4 social conditions: subject home alone, subject and […]
Foraging ‘enrichment’ as treatment for pterotillomania
This study was performed to determine whether foraging ‘enrichment’ reduces self-directed psychogenic feather picking (pterotillomania) in parrots. A positive correlation between increased foraging time and improvement of feather score was hypothesised. Eighteen pterotillomanic African grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus) were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups in a crossover design for two 1-month-periods. The experimental […]