Soap Operatic Avian Action
My brother owns a small group of friendly cockatiels that reside in his home-aviary, and over the past few months, I have been growing to enjoy their presence more and more. Astonishingly intelligent birds, their daily antics and machinations usually find me reevaluating their native personalities.
Perhaps I am simply anthropomorphizing, but I've usually been a believer in the concept of similarity. When I see behaviours in human animals, I can (relatively) reliably attribute mental states to the individuals exhibiting various behaviours. When I observe similar behaviours in a non-human animal species, a presumption must exist that similar mental states have motivated the behaviours. For instance, it should be uncontroversial to suggest that if someone sees me eating a sandwich, they might believe me to be hungry. Should they see another animal eating, it would be sensible to posit 'hunger' as a mental state of the other animal. Far fewer people are willing to extend this same concept to social behaviours, though, for reasons which I feel it safe to label speciesist.
The small family of cockatiels is comprised of Mother, Father, Sister, and Brother (not very personal, but appropriately descriptive). Brother and Sister are the adult children of Mother and Father. When I arrived in Washington, the status quo was near-daily matings of Mother/Father and Father/Sister. Of course, no nests were present in the enclosure, and cockatiels will not lay eggs unless they have a dark, enclosed place in which to do so.
I suggested to my brother that we might provide for them a nest and thereby increase the number of cockatiels present. However, upon the presentation of the nest to the cockatiels, the 'pecking' order shifted. Brother became increasingly aggressive, and frequently attacked Father, even going so far as to push Father off of Mother while the elders were getting it on - and then taking over where Father left off.
Finally, Father accepted his lesser position, and began mating exclusively with Sister while Brother monopolized Mother's reproductive interests. Unfortunately for Father, Mother claimed the nest as her own and jealously guards it from Sister's curiosity. After several weeks investigating the nest and mating with Brother a dozen times a day, Mother finally felt safe enough to start laying eggs inside of it.
The real drama begins when Father (who doesn't seem to quite grasp the biology involved) began to behave as if the newly laid eggs inside the nest were his progeny. I mean, he's been through this once before, and he knows that he's supposed to sit on the eggs with Mother. Brother also seems to understand that he's supposed to be in the nest with the eggs. Unfortunately for the first full clutch of eggs, Brother and Father fought in the nest and broke a few eggs.
With Mother and Brother sitting on the eggs in the small nest, little room existed for Father, but he didn't let anything like that stop him. He enthusiastically climbed into the nest as well, and things have finally settled into a fairly stable and peaceful sort of domestic confusion. Mother doesn't know why there are two males in her nest. Brother doesn't understand why Father is intruding into his nest. Father - blissfully ignorant of the fact that the eggs are clearly not his - happily spends his time caring for the eggs and singing to them.
Eleven eggs and two months later, a single chick has finally been hatched (we can hear the quiet squeaks inside the nest), but we're a bit pessimistic concerning the chick's ability to fend off three separate parents who all want to feed it at the same time. With any luck, though, soon we'll get to say 'hello' to Son or Daughter.
Perhaps I am simply anthropomorphizing, but I've usually been a believer in the concept of similarity. When I see behaviours in human animals, I can (relatively) reliably attribute mental states to the individuals exhibiting various behaviours. When I observe similar behaviours in a non-human animal species, a presumption must exist that similar mental states have motivated the behaviours. For instance, it should be uncontroversial to suggest that if someone sees me eating a sandwich, they might believe me to be hungry. Should they see another animal eating, it would be sensible to posit 'hunger' as a mental state of the other animal. Far fewer people are willing to extend this same concept to social behaviours, though, for reasons which I feel it safe to label speciesist.
The small family of cockatiels is comprised of Mother, Father, Sister, and Brother (not very personal, but appropriately descriptive). Brother and Sister are the adult children of Mother and Father. When I arrived in Washington, the status quo was near-daily matings of Mother/Father and Father/Sister. Of course, no nests were present in the enclosure, and cockatiels will not lay eggs unless they have a dark, enclosed place in which to do so.
I suggested to my brother that we might provide for them a nest and thereby increase the number of cockatiels present. However, upon the presentation of the nest to the cockatiels, the 'pecking' order shifted. Brother became increasingly aggressive, and frequently attacked Father, even going so far as to push Father off of Mother while the elders were getting it on - and then taking over where Father left off.
Finally, Father accepted his lesser position, and began mating exclusively with Sister while Brother monopolized Mother's reproductive interests. Unfortunately for Father, Mother claimed the nest as her own and jealously guards it from Sister's curiosity. After several weeks investigating the nest and mating with Brother a dozen times a day, Mother finally felt safe enough to start laying eggs inside of it.
The real drama begins when Father (who doesn't seem to quite grasp the biology involved) began to behave as if the newly laid eggs inside the nest were his progeny. I mean, he's been through this once before, and he knows that he's supposed to sit on the eggs with Mother. Brother also seems to understand that he's supposed to be in the nest with the eggs. Unfortunately for the first full clutch of eggs, Brother and Father fought in the nest and broke a few eggs.
With Mother and Brother sitting on the eggs in the small nest, little room existed for Father, but he didn't let anything like that stop him. He enthusiastically climbed into the nest as well, and things have finally settled into a fairly stable and peaceful sort of domestic confusion. Mother doesn't know why there are two males in her nest. Brother doesn't understand why Father is intruding into his nest. Father - blissfully ignorant of the fact that the eggs are clearly not his - happily spends his time caring for the eggs and singing to them.
Eleven eggs and two months later, a single chick has finally been hatched (we can hear the quiet squeaks inside the nest), but we're a bit pessimistic concerning the chick's ability to fend off three separate parents who all want to feed it at the same time. With any luck, though, soon we'll get to say 'hello' to Son or Daughter.
posted by The Academian | 3:26 AM
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