Dealing with Fear - Touch New Toy - Parrot Behavior / Psychology

We taught our parrots without knowing anything about target training, so please understand that, for our guys, "touch" means "Touch -- No bite". We use it to tell them it is okay to investigate something and "feel" it with their tongue. For anyone reading this who doesn't know about parrots -- they will use their tongue to touch and feel objects in the same way we use our fingers.

We also use the "touch" instruction to help our parrots to overcome fears. When we see that they are scared or wary of something, we encourage them to "touch" it. We will touch it too -- to show them that it's not dangerous. Once they touch it, that usually reduces or removes the fear. In fact, it works so well that we had to find something AWFULLY big and scary to show the whole process. Otherwise, if it's something wimpy, they get over it within a couple of touches.

They have now surprised us at times by going up and touching something on their own that they consider scary. You can tell because they will approach it with the obvious caution, make a very tentative touch with the tongue, and then run away. It is so cute. After a little bit, they work it out on their own. If we can capture this on video, we will put it up.

For this video, we intentionally put a new foraging toy up during the night when they were asleep. When they came out the next morning, there was this new THING on the playgym. Being a Grey, Bobo had an overt fear, but you will notice that the others also had reservations. In fact, the Jenday, Grasshopper, was really good about her "touch" but then very quickly retreated. LOL They are clever kids.

NOTE -- the person holding the African Grey is also the person doing the video, so after each touch, the camera was stopped to give a treat.

Please keep in mind that we are NOT professional trainers. We rely strictly on the intelligence of our birds when we teach them tricks, which doesn't work in all situations. We recommend that if you are interested in training your parrots, that you visit the site of a professional trainer to learn proper training techniques.

We demonstrated this technique to a professional trainer, who has years of experience with zoos and pets. He let us know it was unique. Our primary reason for putting it up here was because we needed to show what we meant when we described this method to others -- so we could link people to it for research and discussion.

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• parrot
• train
• target
• training
• behavior
• psychology
• African
• Grey
• bird
• tricks
• learn
• clever
• gray
• Bobo
• Grasshopper
• chomper

[CRESTEDGECKO101]

did u make that big group of toyes by yourself or did u get it different ones and just added them togather?

[flychomperfly]

hi -

some we made completely, some we added together (mostly from broken toys), and some are bought. recycling toys is much cheaper, and you can buy toy parts to help make them even better than when they started!

in fact, some on there were initially put up over two years ago -- we just add on wood, beads, leather, wicker, plastic animals, or paper as they get munched down. we also rearrange lots of them when we fix them so the birds think they're new LOL

[rita191919]

Bobo, Grasshopper and Zorro are beautiful!! Your method of teaching them not to be scared of new things is very well done and explained!! How old is your Grey? You call him a baby but it looks like he has grown up eye color.

[flychomperfly]

Thank you!

Keep in mind that our birds had been taught that "touch"  meant to learn about things they were interested in. They had a history of trusting and liking the instruction. So, it may work for birds without that history, but it may not.

My intent for posting this, was to show people what we meant whenever we talked about this method. Also, to show any researchers this non-standard technique.

We are NOT professional trainers, so this is just for information and discussion.

[flychomperfly]

Bobo the grey is going on 3 years old, which is certainly out of the infant stage. However, as you probably know, she is still about 3 years from puberty.

She has her no-longer-infant eye color, but she doesn't yet have the center gold spot.

On the other hand, even if she were a full adult, i probably would be calling her my 'baby' anyway... LOL

[ASKips]

This is amazing.

[DJdext]

what a great video!

[Altermatic]

Wow, I am amazed that this vid doesn't have a thousand more views. Your parrots are so sweet and smart.