[awsanswers]

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.

[tombert]

That'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]

We 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]

My 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]

I also ended up with a stray, but he had been abandoned as a kitten when I got him. He had zero interest in the outside beyond watching the squirrels through the window screens, which he did with rapt attention.

[throw-the-towel]

Pet cats, unlike almost all other animals, have actually been evolving to live near humans for millenia. Congrats on your kittens!

[soperj]

I think this is why Kurt Cobain famously kept his turtles in his bathtub.

[krona]

Many 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.

[yareally]

I would agree with that in most cases. They treat them like their personal house, unless the owner decides to reinforce their use as a form of punishment. Not really any different than building a dog house for a dog.

[recallingmemory]

How did you arrive at the conclusion that birds like cages?

[leetrout]

Not 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.

[londons_explore]

+1 to this. My birds all have open cage doors and they mostly stay in their cage. That's where their food and water is, and they only come out of their cage to go into another one

[recallingmemory]

That's a little different, no? A cage that is open that you can willingly access and leave versus being locked in a cage.

[krona]

Many birds with anxiety problems do much better at night in covered cages. The anxiety may be temporary (e.g. a new person/animal in the house) but nonetheless there are good reasons for it, and quite common in some species.

This just seems obvious to me, but I've been around animals my entire life.

[andyjohnson0]

Most birds roost in trees to minimise exposure to predators. Is it possible that birds that are used to living with humans might similarly see a cage as a place of safety? For rest or just taking a break from watchfulness?

(I'm personally uncomfortable with birds being caged for long periods or in confined spaces, and I'm not offering the above as a justification. I don't own or live with any animals.)

[stevenhuang]

How did you arrive at the conclusion that they don't?

[recallingmemory]

I'm not the one making the claim..

[GN0515]

Well 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?

[krona]

By watching them, and advice from experts.

[albalus]

Even prisoners walk back into their cells. Comfort doesn’t erase confinement. A bird’s world is the open sky—so an open door doesn’t make a cage any less of one.

[gf000]

That's oversimplifying the topic to some catchy lyrics' lines level.

Birds burn a ton of energy flying (at least the birds in question here, other birds can glide for long times), it's not something they would willingly do to no ends.

[krona]

Why do blue tits nest in tiny boxes with tiny holes?

[albalus]

Tree hollow analog? Small birds worry a lot more about predators.

[yareally]

Plenty of small birds do not nest in tree cavities. Chipping sparrows[1] for example do not and are of similar size. Hummingbirds also do not. Meanwhile, owls live in nest cavities and most are larger than songbirds.

That said, the going theory about why some birds choose to nest in cavities is lower mortality rate in their young. Birds who nest in boxes typically have more babies per clutch than those that do not so perhaps that's it? I take that more as no one really knows why one species does while another of similar size does not.

Another random observation is most large birds walk and smaller birds hop. That's not always true either, since blue jays hop and crows will walk and sometimes hop. Hummingbirds cannot do either and just shuffle side to side on perches.

I guess I'm trying to say there's exceptions to the rules in bird behavior, but they're more outliers.

[1] https://brighamstephen.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018...

[mannykannot]

I reckon that’s right (though maybe its mostly instinct rather than explicit worry), and I imagine there’s also the risk of being kicked out by a larger species looking for a nesting site.

[tibbydudeza]

We 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.

[justonceokay]

I 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]

A 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]

If you’ve ever had a cat that is adamant about trying to escape you might feel differently.

[appletrotter]

> 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.

[atmosx]

Have 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.

[kjkjadksj]

Yeah like “back up from door” not “poor baby just wants to be free.”

[dameyawn]

> 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]

Modern 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.

[kjkjadksj]

Apartment 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.

[nandomrumber]

How do you go sleeping under the stars when it’s below zero, blowing its guts out, and snowing.

[kjkjadksj]

Look 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.

[nandomrumber]

What, so ants, bees, wasps… they’re allowed to built shelter from the elements.

But when humans do it’s unnatural?

And besides, if you saw how hairy I am you’d probably reconsidered your opinion.

[justonceokay]

Yes but I can leave whenever I want.

[kjkjadksj]

Can you? Leave in the middle of every work meeting next month and see what happens.

[justonceokay]

You 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]

The only one who is arguing in bad faith are the ones equating a cat chilling in an apartment to some form of slavery.

[make3]

it'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]

Social interaction may take more mental capacity than hunting and surviving?

[make3]

they also need to understand human behavior a little bit I guess, & that's pretty complicated (so not just social, social of humans specifically)

[soopypoos]

"Your Pet Cat Has a Smaller Brain Than Its Wild Ancestors"

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/cat-brains-have-sh...

[nandomrumber]

more developed frontal cortexes

And smaller brains

Aren’t mutually exclusive

[soopypoos]

Yeah it probably shrank as it developed

[CalRobert]

It’s for the best, house cats torture the birds and frogs around here and I hate it. I never knew frogs could scream.

[ertian]

And generally just tear through native populations of birds and small mammals. I honestly think it's irresponsible to have outdoor cats in places where they're not native (which is effectively everywhere).

[vgivanovic]

It depends.

My indoor-outdoor cat only catches small animals if they run between her paws. But she did chase a rather large raccoon around the house once, as I did.

In my suburban neighborhood, we occasionally have coyotes. They are known to prey on fat cats (the feline kind).

My feeling is that predation by domesticated outdoor cats is overblown.

I also feel that small wild cats were likely native everywhere. Birds were probably not their primary prey; small reptiles and mammals, i.e. animals that don't fly, nest in trees, or live in flocks.

[nandomrumber]

> My feeling is that predation by domesticated outdoor cats is overblown.

It’s just something we’ve all been told all our lives, with the people doing the telling never point to any evidence to back it up.

Even when cats are wild and native, their hunts aren’t particularly successful, except the desert sand cat[1] which is so small it would perish if its hunts were low rate success.

And if you watch videos of collar cameras on cats, they seem to spent all their time doing a perimeter check, having a quick social interaction with other cats doing the same, and maybe brushing up against a frigidly neighbour human.

The idea that a house cat that has warmth, food, water, bedding, would bother to waste time killing small birds and mammals that have hardly any meat on them anyway is fairly unbelievable.

Feral cats are a different story. But don’t blame responsible cat owners for that problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_cat

[brabel]

I had a neighbor once that had 2 cats. The only thing they seemed to care about was catching birds and chasing squirrels. They only caught birds but they did catch them often. Many cats are exceptionally good at catching mice and bringing them back home. Some seem to enjoy torturing them. Also in some countries like Australia they absolutely decimate the native population if left unchecked, and that’s according to actual data about the presence of cats and the level of wild animals.

[card_zero]

There 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-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.

[bitwize]

That tracks for sika deer. Those are the "sacred deer" that used to be venerated in Nara, and are still protected under Japanese national treasure laws. They are allowed to roam free throughout Nara, and you face big penalties for hurting or messing with them. You are allowed to feed them special deer crackers which local shopkeepers sell, but woe betide you if a deer sees or smells deer crackers on your person! You will be followed or chased, and may be at risk of being gored on a buck's antlers, until you give up the goods. They're attitude on four cloven hooves, those deer.

[CalRobert]

Sure but housecats aren’t nature

[card_zero]

They're totally doing that same lynx stuff, though. They're not not nature.

[CalRobert]

Yeah but we’re not artificially inflating lynx populations because we think they’re cute…

[bob1029]

Cats have completely deleted the rabbit populations in a lot of suburbia. I feel like it got worse around 2020 for some reason. I had to move to the middle of the woods to start seeing them again.

[card_zero]

Got lots of rabbits in my town, on a tiny nature reserve beside a footpath that goes from some office complexes to an industrial estate. It's ten minutes walk from the houses where people keep cats. I guess all those fluffy neutered cats have dedicated their attention to actual cat food and to the sport of infringing on the territories of other cats, and just aren't very rabbit-centric. If the cats were feral and breeding the rabbits might be in trouble.

[nandomrumber]

Is there somewhere rabbits aren’t a problem for humans?

They’ll devastate anything farmers intend to do.

They’re public enemy number one here in Australia.

[justonceokay]

Life sucks. I bet the 10s of 1000s of animals used to source the protein in your cat food had a great life though

[CalRobert]

They eat crickets funny enough. Anallergic. And as animal production goes the crickets seem happy enough.

[a_t48]

What difference would a house make here? A yard?

[justonceokay]

I 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]

cats hate stairs

[theultdev]

I'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]

I 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]

so you probably never had cats that run up and down stairs 10 times at 6am.

[akramachamarei]

Carpetedness may make a big difference in this case.

[soopypoos]

But then you did get one?

[nothrowaways]

Yes. After buying a house with a yard, a pool, and a few trees.

[paulryanrogers]

For those with outdoor cats, please put a bell on their collar. Give the birds a fighting chance.

[bloomingeek]

This 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.

[yareally]

If 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]

did you teach him the words? Mine has learned some just by context (he's still quite young though, barely 2 years old).

[yareally]

Surprisingly, 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.

[dinfinity]

> 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]

> 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]

Moving 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]

Complexity 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]

There 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.

[dinfinity]

So are animals trivially executing a complex program or are they 'analyzing' a complex problem?

LLMs can (more often) successfully find solutions for far more complex problems than animals can. So where does that leave us?

[dinfinity]

Neither of those are based in intelligence, but rather in dexterity, agility and sensing capabilities. Try again, and this time please read the question carefully and answer in good faith rather than trying to (unsuccessfully) look for a loophole.

[sh4rks]

Dogs can be trained for a variety of tasks that require wit. Such as helping the blind navigate. And sniffing for illegal drugs.

[dinfinity]

Sniffing for illegal drugs requires wit? Right.

And 'trained' clearly means it is not something based in intelligence, but in repetition and conditioning.

Answer the actual question.

[sh4rks]

If you think being a guide dog doesn't require intelligence, you're delusional.

> answer the actual question

I literally did. You asked, which task that requires intelligence would I rather use an animal over an Llm. I'd much rather have a dog as my guide dog than an Llm. It can use it's innate intelligence to sense danger, navigate around obstacles it's never seen before, and even communicate with other humans through barking.

> trained clearly means it is not something based in intelligence, but in repetition and conditioning

I can't tell if you're trolling at this point. Llms are also trained and therefore are based on repetition and conditioning.

[dinfinity]

> If you think being a guide dog doesn't require intelligence, you're delusional.

I see you dropped "sniffing out drugs" as a task requiring intelligence, that's a start.

> It can use it's innate intelligence to sense danger

So sensing danger requires intelligence? Bacteria can sense danger.

> navigate around obstacles it's never seen before

Not intelligence, but dexterity. Only if it has to solve a puzzle does intelligence come into play. And dogs suck ass at solving puzzles. Some birds are somewhat decent at it, but still very far removed from what an LLM can do.

> communicate with other humans through barking

Yeah, Timmy fell down a well, right? Perfect example of 'intelligence' and something you'd prefer a dog over an LLM /s

> I can't tell if you're trolling at this point. Llms are also trained and therefore are based on repetition and conditioning.

That is a fair point, but remember that your training examples were "sniffing for drugs" and "being a guide dog", both of which are very much in-distribution training (guide dogs only do a very specific very small set of things and require a lot of training to even be able to do those).

But for the sake of argument, let's say that there are some tasks requiring intelligence where you would prefer a dog over an LLM. Answer me this: Roughly what percentage of distinct tasks requiring intelligence would you prefer to have a dog over an LLM? For each task, imagine that failure to complete the task will cause serious harm to your loved ones, so the stakes are high.

[stronglikedan]

> 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]

That 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!