Biting
A Conure is a Parrot! Please do not let their diminutive size fool you!!! They will test dominance and go through a "nipping" phase. They will require firm and consistent training to over come this!!!!!!!
Please understand that having patience, being firm and not giving up are key! "Getting rid" of your bird for nipping, should never be considered! Birds have feelings, emotions, feel empathy and are genuinely affectionate and caring creatures!
Please understand that having patience, being firm and not giving up are key! "Getting rid" of your bird for nipping, should never be considered! Birds have feelings, emotions, feel empathy and are genuinely affectionate and caring creatures!
The Biting Parrot
A guide by: The Conure Queen/Nicole Monaghan
A guide by: The Conure Queen/Nicole Monaghan
The parrot/human bond can be very strong. It can also be strong in a negative way. First hand, I have seen what happens when a parrot does not trust a particular human in the family. It is usually permanent, and will cause hurt feelings in the human, and what looks like pure hatred from the parrot.
The positive bond will take time, patience, understanding, consistence, and a firm but kind leader.
One of the main complaints we hear of is biting. Let me first say, that to “train” a bird to bite is EASY, and all it takes is two miscommunications between human and bird, and you WILL train a perfectly nice baby how to bite. To “train” the baby NOT to bite will take a commitment—time, patience, understanding, and most of all consistence.
Aggressive biting is not a natural behavior of adult parrots; we teach it to them.
This usually happens because we approach a bird improperly or try to play with them when they don't want to be played with. They really don't want to bite, but we frequently fail to heed the "leave me alone" signs like walking away, growling or gently holding our fingers. Parrots do not to bite in the wild and a properly raised and kept domestic parrot should not bite. Biting, screaming and many other 'bad' behaviors are just our birds telling us something is wrong.
Biting is not a normal behavior:
First let's try to understand what a beak is for!
It is important to understand that parrots in the wild rarely appear to use their beaks as a weapon against other parrots. If needed, the beak is a protection against predators such as snakes and raptors (birds of prey), but not against others in their own flock. In their natural environments, competition and/ or conflict between parrots rarely escalates to physical violence --- instead, they vocalize (scream) and/or use body language by strutting, posturing, and fluffing feathers to make themselves look bigger. Beaks are used for climbing, eating, playing (wrestling) and preening... not for biting.
This means that biting is not instinctive behavior -- in actuality, biting is considered to be a "displacement behavior." Natural behaviors designed for survival in the rain forest are generally not possible in a human's living room so other behaviors take their place -- these are displacement behaviors. These "improvised" responses are not all negative, either --- a positive example would be a parrot's ability to bond to a human in the absence of members of its own species, and to accept the humans with whom it lives as members of its flock.
Why is my parrot biting?
The first question to ask when dealing with a biting parrot is why --- under what circumstance is this happening? From my experience, birds bite, generally, for several reasons: survival, control, misunderstanding/misinterpreting human behavior and sexual maturity.
Survival would include a bird biting out of fear, it is a reaction that in the wild, one member of a pair will act as “guard”. That bird will alert the other of impending danger by striking at and pushing the other out of the way.
This can also be said of a bird that is injured. Contrary to that nice old saying, most animals CANNOT sense when you're trying to help them (example: "I was only trying to pull a broken blood feather, but he bit the @&%$# out of me!")
Control would most certainly be a juvenile parrot, or a new older parrot changing families. They will start asserting themselves to see who in your family will be the flock leader. Of course, the parrot hopes it is itself. Parrots start using their beaks to refuse a command, such as the ‘up’ command. If the owner pulls their hand or finger away the parrot takes that gesture as a sign of submission.
One of the best ways to reinforce biting behavior is to jerk your finger or hand away from the striking beak. Most birds start biting with a tentative attempt at dominance -- striking without trying to grab hard. When the owner pulls away from the bird and shows fear, the bird sees it as a submissive reaction
You will effectively train your bird HOW to bite!
Misunderstanding/misinterpreting human behavior may be harder to pinpoint. This scenario usually happens when an inexperienced owner is not clear in their signals to the parrot. For example, when offering a hand for the bird to step up, a novice owner often isn't quite sure of him/herself... so their hand motion is uncertain. The parrot may wish very much to climb on, but like a workman unsure of the stability of a ladder, it reaches with its mouth (in this case, the beak functions as a hand) to steady the human perch. The human, afraid of that beak, pulls their hand away. Now the parrot is confused!
The next time the human's hand is offered uncertainly, the parrot grabs onto the hand with its beak to hold it steady so it can climb on --- and the human jerks away. The baby has no idea what has happened but if the scene is repeated (as it usually is), the bird will learn that its beak will make this person go away.
If the human is afraid of being bitten, then he/she will often unconsciously pull away when the bird reaches with their beak. The parrot will now use lunging and biting as an effective technique with which to control the human and that bird will remain in control for as long as the human remains afraid. Parrots can sense when someone is frightened and will take advantage of it every time. If the person cannot get over their fear response, then (s)he will probably never gain control of the bird.
Sexual maturity behaviors are when hormone levels are raging -- after all, look at many teenagers! Learning the bird's body language will go a long way towards preventing hurt feelings and fingers during this time and the advice is simple: when they are in full sexual display, DON'T REACH FOR THEM. Leave them alone until they settle down. While certain Amazon species have the worst reputation for this, other species, such as cockatoos and African Greys may also become hormonal biters during their breeding seasons, but in fact, most all parrots will go through a version or variation of this. Males may become excited while displaying for their human ‘mates’ and grab your finger. Females often become territorial about guarding their cages, as if the cage were a nest.
Other things to consider and what NOT to do:
This is important to understand: parrots in captivity are actually rewarded for biting -- by humans that simply do not understand how differently parrots can perceive things. The following is a classic example.
Baby parrots often have no idea what their beaks can do, especially while going though their “teething stage”. During "The Teething Stage", the baby is learning to eat and explore with it's beak, and a tragic scenario is often acted out. The baby, in the process of exploring with it's beak, encounters those wondrous things called human fingers. If the human makes the mistake of using their fingers as toys in the baby's mouth, sooner or later the baby will bite down harder than the finger's owner might like. If the human responds to this accidental nip by yelling (as in, "OUCH, OW, OW!!!"), then they have inadvertently taken the first step towards actually teaching their baby to bite.
Contrary to human beliefs, parrots really enjoy it when humans yell at them. Parrots often scream simply for the fun of it so it is totally untrue to think they perceive yelling as a reprimand. On the contrary, they generally interpret yelling as positive feed-back. This is what we call The Drama Reward. So the baby parrot will nip again, because the human inadvertently rewarded it for nipping. Sooner or later, the experimental nips will actually hurt the human (emotionally as well as physically), and the human's response becomes something to the effect of "YOU BAD BABY, YOUR MOMMY (or DADDY) LOVES YOU, HOW COULD YOU BITE YOUR MOMMY (or DADDY)??!??!! The baby doesn't understand what's happening here, of course -- it thinks this is a wonderful new game. You know, grab a finger and your person makes lots of WONDERFUL noise!!
So what else DON'T you do? You do not under ANY circumstance, use violence against the bird. If you do, even if you don't physically harm him, you will do permanent damage to your relationship with him -- like I said earlier, violence does not appear to be a routine flock behavior, and your parrot simply will not understand your use of violence against him -- so odds are, he will never be able to trust you again.
It also doesn't work to punish by putting the bird in its cage, because all you will do is inadvertently give the parrot something good: going back to it's cage, where there is safety, food, water and toys. Akin to grounding a child that has a big screen TV, mini fridge, bathroom, Wii, computer and Ipod all in their room.
The positive bond will take time, patience, understanding, consistence, and a firm but kind leader.
One of the main complaints we hear of is biting. Let me first say, that to “train” a bird to bite is EASY, and all it takes is two miscommunications between human and bird, and you WILL train a perfectly nice baby how to bite. To “train” the baby NOT to bite will take a commitment—time, patience, understanding, and most of all consistence.
Aggressive biting is not a natural behavior of adult parrots; we teach it to them.
This usually happens because we approach a bird improperly or try to play with them when they don't want to be played with. They really don't want to bite, but we frequently fail to heed the "leave me alone" signs like walking away, growling or gently holding our fingers. Parrots do not to bite in the wild and a properly raised and kept domestic parrot should not bite. Biting, screaming and many other 'bad' behaviors are just our birds telling us something is wrong.
Biting is not a normal behavior:
First let's try to understand what a beak is for!
It is important to understand that parrots in the wild rarely appear to use their beaks as a weapon against other parrots. If needed, the beak is a protection against predators such as snakes and raptors (birds of prey), but not against others in their own flock. In their natural environments, competition and/ or conflict between parrots rarely escalates to physical violence --- instead, they vocalize (scream) and/or use body language by strutting, posturing, and fluffing feathers to make themselves look bigger. Beaks are used for climbing, eating, playing (wrestling) and preening... not for biting.
This means that biting is not instinctive behavior -- in actuality, biting is considered to be a "displacement behavior." Natural behaviors designed for survival in the rain forest are generally not possible in a human's living room so other behaviors take their place -- these are displacement behaviors. These "improvised" responses are not all negative, either --- a positive example would be a parrot's ability to bond to a human in the absence of members of its own species, and to accept the humans with whom it lives as members of its flock.
Why is my parrot biting?
The first question to ask when dealing with a biting parrot is why --- under what circumstance is this happening? From my experience, birds bite, generally, for several reasons: survival, control, misunderstanding/misinterpreting human behavior and sexual maturity.
Survival would include a bird biting out of fear, it is a reaction that in the wild, one member of a pair will act as “guard”. That bird will alert the other of impending danger by striking at and pushing the other out of the way.
This can also be said of a bird that is injured. Contrary to that nice old saying, most animals CANNOT sense when you're trying to help them (example: "I was only trying to pull a broken blood feather, but he bit the @&%$# out of me!")
Control would most certainly be a juvenile parrot, or a new older parrot changing families. They will start asserting themselves to see who in your family will be the flock leader. Of course, the parrot hopes it is itself. Parrots start using their beaks to refuse a command, such as the ‘up’ command. If the owner pulls their hand or finger away the parrot takes that gesture as a sign of submission.
One of the best ways to reinforce biting behavior is to jerk your finger or hand away from the striking beak. Most birds start biting with a tentative attempt at dominance -- striking without trying to grab hard. When the owner pulls away from the bird and shows fear, the bird sees it as a submissive reaction
You will effectively train your bird HOW to bite!
Misunderstanding/misinterpreting human behavior may be harder to pinpoint. This scenario usually happens when an inexperienced owner is not clear in their signals to the parrot. For example, when offering a hand for the bird to step up, a novice owner often isn't quite sure of him/herself... so their hand motion is uncertain. The parrot may wish very much to climb on, but like a workman unsure of the stability of a ladder, it reaches with its mouth (in this case, the beak functions as a hand) to steady the human perch. The human, afraid of that beak, pulls their hand away. Now the parrot is confused!
The next time the human's hand is offered uncertainly, the parrot grabs onto the hand with its beak to hold it steady so it can climb on --- and the human jerks away. The baby has no idea what has happened but if the scene is repeated (as it usually is), the bird will learn that its beak will make this person go away.
If the human is afraid of being bitten, then he/she will often unconsciously pull away when the bird reaches with their beak. The parrot will now use lunging and biting as an effective technique with which to control the human and that bird will remain in control for as long as the human remains afraid. Parrots can sense when someone is frightened and will take advantage of it every time. If the person cannot get over their fear response, then (s)he will probably never gain control of the bird.
Sexual maturity behaviors are when hormone levels are raging -- after all, look at many teenagers! Learning the bird's body language will go a long way towards preventing hurt feelings and fingers during this time and the advice is simple: when they are in full sexual display, DON'T REACH FOR THEM. Leave them alone until they settle down. While certain Amazon species have the worst reputation for this, other species, such as cockatoos and African Greys may also become hormonal biters during their breeding seasons, but in fact, most all parrots will go through a version or variation of this. Males may become excited while displaying for their human ‘mates’ and grab your finger. Females often become territorial about guarding their cages, as if the cage were a nest.
Other things to consider and what NOT to do:
This is important to understand: parrots in captivity are actually rewarded for biting -- by humans that simply do not understand how differently parrots can perceive things. The following is a classic example.
Baby parrots often have no idea what their beaks can do, especially while going though their “teething stage”. During "The Teething Stage", the baby is learning to eat and explore with it's beak, and a tragic scenario is often acted out. The baby, in the process of exploring with it's beak, encounters those wondrous things called human fingers. If the human makes the mistake of using their fingers as toys in the baby's mouth, sooner or later the baby will bite down harder than the finger's owner might like. If the human responds to this accidental nip by yelling (as in, "OUCH, OW, OW!!!"), then they have inadvertently taken the first step towards actually teaching their baby to bite.
Contrary to human beliefs, parrots really enjoy it when humans yell at them. Parrots often scream simply for the fun of it so it is totally untrue to think they perceive yelling as a reprimand. On the contrary, they generally interpret yelling as positive feed-back. This is what we call The Drama Reward. So the baby parrot will nip again, because the human inadvertently rewarded it for nipping. Sooner or later, the experimental nips will actually hurt the human (emotionally as well as physically), and the human's response becomes something to the effect of "YOU BAD BABY, YOUR MOMMY (or DADDY) LOVES YOU, HOW COULD YOU BITE YOUR MOMMY (or DADDY)??!??!! The baby doesn't understand what's happening here, of course -- it thinks this is a wonderful new game. You know, grab a finger and your person makes lots of WONDERFUL noise!!
So what else DON'T you do? You do not under ANY circumstance, use violence against the bird. If you do, even if you don't physically harm him, you will do permanent damage to your relationship with him -- like I said earlier, violence does not appear to be a routine flock behavior, and your parrot simply will not understand your use of violence against him -- so odds are, he will never be able to trust you again.
It also doesn't work to punish by putting the bird in its cage, because all you will do is inadvertently give the parrot something good: going back to it's cage, where there is safety, food, water and toys. Akin to grounding a child that has a big screen TV, mini fridge, bathroom, Wii, computer and Ipod all in their room.
