Advanced welfare science for companion parrots, addressing their exceptional intelligence, social complexity, enrichment requirements, and the welfare challenges of keeping highly evolved wild animals as pets.
Companion parrots occupy a troubling welfare space — they are intelligent, long-lived wild animals whose needs for complex social interaction, cognitive stimulation, and physical activity are extraordinarily difficult to meet in typical household settings. The result is widespread welfare suffering: birds that scream from frustration, mutilate their own feathers from boredom and anxiety, and cycle through a series of owners unable to meet their needs. The ethical question of whether large parrots should be kept as pets at all is increasingly raised by welfare scientists. For those already in captivity, welfare requires genuine commitment to species-appropriate enrichment, social companionship (ideally from conspecifics), veterinary care from avian specialists, and honest assessment of whether the individual can be adequately provided for.