Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!munnari.oz.au!manuel!sserve!news
From: rim@csadfa.cs.adfa.oz.au (Bob McKay)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: Importing parrots for genetic variability
Message-ID: <1991Jun18.090020.24510@sserve.cc.adfa.oz.au>
Date: 18 Jun 91 09:00:20 GMT
References: <285D20D1.4189@intercon.com>
Sender: news@sserve.cc.adfa.oz.au
Organization: Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra, Australia
Lines: 30

From article <285D20D1.4189@intercon.com>, by ooblick@intercon.com (Mikki Barry):
> In article <1991Jun17.024522.12693@sserve.cc.adfa.oz.au>, 
> rim@csadfa.cs.adfa.oz.au (Bob McKay) writes:
>> This won't work, at least with cockatoos. If you keep them, then you must be 
>> aware of how intelligent and social they are. Released birds don't have the
>> learned background to survive ......
>> .. Pet sulphur crested cockatoos released or lost in Australia don't go out
>> and survive in the wild, they just hang around cities trying to get their 
>> flock cousins (people) to look after them, and die when they don't succeed.
> 
> You are making the assumption that the birds will be kept as pets before re-
> release. If the parents completely raise the cockatoos, they will be perfectly
> capable of returning to a wild population.
Of course not, the point is that the wild environment is so complex, and so
different from what they are used to, that the birds can't possibly get the
education they need just from being raised with their parents. They have truly
enormous home ranges, migrating many hundreds of kilometres each year, and the
migration paths are complex, as the food sources for some are rare, and their 
locations have to be memorised. You are underestimating the intelligence of your
pets and the complexity of the environment that they have evolved to cope with
if you think that they can learn all that from their caged parents (or perhaps
you're overestimating them, and believe that the parents can communicate it all
verbally 8-)). It seems to take a young cockatoo years - perhaps five or more -
to fully learn all the skills it needs to survive in the wild; how could cage
learning ever possibly substitute for that?

Bob McKay		   Phone:	+61 6 268 8169	    fax: +61 6 268 8581
Dept. Computer Science		ACSNET,CSNET:	rim@csadfa.cs.adfa.oz
Aust. Defence Force Academy	UUCP:	...!uunet!munnari!csadfa.cs.adfa.oz!rim
Canberra ACT 2600 AUSTRALIA	ARPA:	rim%csadfa.cs.adfa.oz@uunet.uu.net