As it turns out, the traits that make us fall in love with cockatoos are the same ones that cause their behavior problems and land them in rescues everywhere.

There are specific traits that they have that make it nearly impossible to avoid anthropomorphizing their behavior. The cockatoo, specifically the white ones, are parrots that excel at pulling on our heartstrings. However, our humanness is also the very thing that makes us try so hard to get it right. One of the biggest struggles we have in doing things right for our parrots is with our humanness because it makes something that should be completely natural feel like work. It is even harder to WANT to see things from their perspective because sometimes it is a harsh look at the realities of nature.Īnthropomorphizing is a hole we don’t want to fall into. However, we are human, and it is hard to see things from a parrot’s perspective. The “fort” is a nest and the bird is definitely not playing. It has nothing to do with having found their other half. In reality parrots choose mates based on their ability to produce healthy chicks and defend their nest. However, when we allow ourselves that convenience it causes us to make mistakes in our care for our parrots, such as allowing them to “play” in a “fort” they are building inside a dark cabinet. An example of this would be the presumption that parrots fall in love like humans do based on the fact that they choose a mate for life.Īnthropomorphizing is a tool that many humans use to try to make sense of things that they don’t understand. It means to assign human traits to things that are not human, such as a parrot. If you are the kind of person who has scoured the internet to learn everything available about your parrot, you have no doubt come across this word “anthropomorphism”.

Cockatoo species with pictures