I want to get a bird but I know nothing about them. What are

>>2342654
>will it fly away and never come back?

Without even knowing what 'away' is, almost certainly.

I have little knowledge of birds though. My granny had finches and they were pretty chill.

>>2342654
Am falconer. A raptor would work if you're reasonably into watching cute things get horribly stabbed, or at least not blanching at the thought. Great thing about these sky gorillas is they don't make noises or really do anything much at all besides eat. And when they eat, they come back to you, presuming you were outside and it was not already on your glove.

However, if you know literally nothing about birds you may wish to start with something easier, like a pigeon. This is mostly so you get used to how birds are: fast metabolism, sensitive to some diseases (idk if a pigeon would teach you that though), a bitch to catch, neck-bellies, usw.

>>2342673
Pigeons are a good option for OP, since homers will fly away and come back if you have a loft/dovecote for them. Most pet birds will not having a homing instinct.

Alternatively, consider mynahs or zebra finches, or even a starling if you can find someone selling (or you're willing to kidnap baby birds).

>>2342654
If you get a pigeon it'll come back. And it doesn't eat cute things unless you think seeds are adorable. Some ducks don't fly away as long as they're treated and fed well. Some chickens don't fly. I don't know much about parrots.

Birds live a LONG time, are dirty, and are mid to high level maintenence pets. I'd get a pigeon, if I couldn't somehow rescure a hummingbird by chance.

>>2342673
I forgot to add "most of them emphatically DO NOT like being touched" to that list. Closest I had to one liking it was a male red-tail that we decided was allopreening my fingers (no homo). Pretty much all the others I've messed with (chickens, ducks, geese, guineas, peafowl, pigeons, songbirds in a rescue, raptors) did not like it and never indicated that it would ever grow on them. Although my bird whispering massively improved recently with the falconry, so maybe if I went back I'd see a big improvement in their ability to put up with being touched. (Notice I say "put up with" and not "like", even here.)

>>2342678
Idk enough about tropical birds, parrots and such. I think I confused this thread with the one where the guy wasn't wanting parrots, and since my brain kinda lumps all tropical birds in the same bin I just skipped the whole class as "loud".

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>>2342673
>into watching cute things get horribly stabbed


Why would that be fun?

Why does it seem people who have pets that eat live animals always fixate on the eating and death. Why cant people just appreciate the animals themselves and accept that, yes, many animals need live food to survive, and unfortunately that food is another animal. Such is the food chain.

Its not a reason to celebrate death and degrade the poor animal into some monster spectacle of gore just because it cant help what kind of food it needs. The animal is just trying to abate the natural pain of hunger and gain comfort of nutrition and survival. Its the peculiar human who makes sadistic associations with the animal being killed.

I dont understand people. Humans are omnivores, uniquely aware of life and death. We should not be blamed for our historical and present affinity for meat. But what can you say about humans who go a step further and use the same natural drives of other carnivorous animals as a spectacle for violence?

They say animal abuse fits a profile of mentally unwell people. It seems having predators might be a good cover for legitimizing the same drives, using the poor animal predator as a patsy for their own twisted interests. People kept carnivores long before anyone thought watching them feed was an enthralling spectacle. Besides, its an indirect way of shaming an animal for something it has no choice in by making it a spectacle. Its basically implying that being a carnivore is innately evil, thus the spectacle of gore and violence when the poor thing is just surviving.

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>>2342700
You're already on /an/ I'm not speaking for everyone but that's a step toward hating people.

>>2342699
It takes a lot of time to get a bird to trust you enough to let you preen it. To a untamed pet bird, you are a giant raptorial creature with enormous claws ready to clasp around its feathered hide and snap its neck in an instant.

>>2342703

Well, you have me there. Im not sure how its related though.

>>2342714
Yes. My point is that someone coming from a dog/cat world probably won't just get this.

>>2342717
>how is misanthropy, and the human drive to vicariously identify with animals that must kill to survive, not related

>>2342714
Sometimes birds are just dicks too. My pigeon only preens my husband even though I'm the one who takes care of him.

>>2342700
>Why would that be fun?
Its meant to be partly dark humor. But desu there's some pleasure to be had from hunting. That being said it's not required you like it (and I said as much), only that you can function with that reality without breaking down emotionally or something.

Redtails / raptors are, in spite of your feelings on the matter, brutal, sociopathic, little demons. The only thing they really love is killing and eating things. They hate other raptors as a rule, like a damn lot. They don't necessarily make sure it's dead before they start eating. They don't like you. Mine doesn't like me; she only puts up with me and/or has come to understand I am not a threat to her. Raptors are not romantic in any sense of the word. I do not feel inclined to sugarcoat reality here.

Their main redeeming trait is that they sit around and do nothing most of the time since they're lazy.

>Birds
>quiet most of the time

HA HAHAHAHAH HA HAHA HA

Dont get a parrot.

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>>2342738
>But f@m* there's some pleasure to be had from hunting.

Yeah I get that. I get very primal feelings and it feels great being able to go ahead with them through hunting for my own meat. It isn't just for meat, it is a lot of fun and very exhilarating. But thats just me. Because of this feeling, i thought i was a predatory animal spirit stuck in a human body when i was a fourteen year old snowflake.

I guess some people are more attuned to these primal feelings than others.

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>>2342738
>partly dark humor

Oh. Its just there are people here who mean it.

You know more about raptors, obviously. I'd just say that I'd have trouble ascribing malice in an intellectual sense to a predator. Granted, I would assume they operate in feeding/hunting from an emotional state that we might liken to rage, as we might infer from brutality towards prey and a total lack of empathy.

Yet,... and this will have me staring at the ceiling as I wait to sleep later.. I dont think it is simultaneously possible to feel both empathy towards something you are eating. I dont know. But it seems impossible (if a bird felt empathy at all).

Humans can empathize with an animal and then slaughter it (or another human, for that matter), but its in succession, not simultaneously. They say you have to dehumanize a person you kill. I am not sure what intellectual action that implies, but its clearly a shift in perception.

I dont think a raptor has these options. For one, think of the alternative; it would be susceptible to being aware of its food as being a living thing, and then having an opinion on that. Even if were capable of that, it would be doing it without our ego, and subject to injury from the very thing it is eating fighting back. So in the case of the bird lacking an ego, any empathy at all could get it killed by a snake or such.

Secondly, we humans have a ton of abstract assumptions about eating that we project onto animals. We make lots of associations about nutrition, taste, regular meal times and expectations, and make a link to eating and life, health.

I really dont think thats how it works in animals. For an animal, that rage I spoke of, or agitation has no intellectual connection to life or health. The longest I ever went without food was about a week. While I knew what was bending my thinking, an animal would not...

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>>2342765

There is hormonal and neurotransmissive disruption. Agitation is putting it mildly. You get aggressive feelings without aggressive thoughts. Mood swings. And like any addict, your biological priorities change without your intellectual consent. It literally, physically changes your state of existence, and therefore physically changes you, the person.

Now as a human, we can understand the 'why', the cause and effect. An animal, by contrast, just would feel the agitation, the desperation, the impending sense of panicked rage and impulsive thinking, and worry from bouts of weakness intermixed with adrenal rushes. Some animals will make the association that sustenance, at least something to calm its stomach pain might help. But even then, I am not sure how much is causal understanding and how much is just impulse driven by the internal chaos of hunger.

So I dont know if most animals associate the two. Herbivores, for example, must experience a hunger drive also. So is grazing a sort of nervous behavior, like chewing in distressed animals?

My suspicion is that animals that prey simply attack, wittingly or not, out of agitation and detection of something animate that they may (or may not) associate with relief, Since attack for so many species is limited to biting, either for aggression or simple external manipulation, the next step would be ingestion. This would have the effect of reducing the chemical chaos of hunger, probably first through electrolytes and simple carbs, as well as volume relieving mechanical hunger.

And thus, the animal has acted out in emotional distress, orally fixated on something of interest, perhaps or perhaps not conciously followed through to ingestion and fed without actually meaning to or understanding...

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>>2342767

Mind you, this is relative to the animals mental ability; I am not suggestiong a conniving hyena makes as little association between food, hunting, eating and hunger as cuttlefish. But it would explain part of the evolution of carnivorous behavior.

What continues to puzzle me though, is what occurs in an animals brain that it decides one animate object is food and another one isn't. That has always made me wonder.

Sorry for the tldr blog. The evolution of behavior in animals is just something I find interesting, cuz I always feel I learn about ourselves as well.

:/

>>2342765
>>2342767
>>2342773

Do you have any knowledge/experience in science that has actually been done on this topic or are you just rambling based on what you think could be?

>>2342738
You are anthropomorphizing really hard right now.

>>2342731
The pigeon pair bonded with your husband. Pigeons take one mate, and they mate for life.

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>>2342775
>tfw cucked by your own pigeon

I was hoping it wasn't this...

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>>2342763

I am not sure they are related. Hunting is not itself governed by aggression. You can hunt for food, but you can find sport and recreation in hunting as well.

I mean, for some people, maybe they really do like killing animals, I dont know. If they do, its only reasonable to further ask why without prejudice; its genuinely possible to learn from it.

But for others, it may simply be routine or recreational association. For example, people who enjoy golf probably dont have much of an opinion on the merits of chasing a ball around; thats not how they see it.

Likewise, for those people who do derive some gratification from the actual kill rather than the hunt itself: I dont make a judgement here. Its a fact that we survived and evolved because of this impulse honed to a social skill. Its pointless to make a 'moral' judgement, because a person can genuinely appreciate animals and still be in a situation where the skill and drive is necessary for survival, and skill comes with practice.

There are many digressions one can make away from that point, and they are valid too, but the point remains; humans fare well with meat, and that meat has to be acquired.

So I dont think there is any point on making 'moral' judgements about what we call the 'killer' instinct. We *can* make such judgements about how it is managed in a social way, and even then only if we are departing the subject of science. Jails are full of thugs, murderers and sociopaths. They dont fare well in society, but it is a mistake to think the personality types are themselves some evolutionary mistake, for primitive, aggressive, selfish behavior is valuable in more primitive settings that can easily return, and even win for societys survival. It takes more than training and gentle intellectual resolve to be effective in combat...

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>>2342792

I just mean that I dont think we should shame people who feel a rush from hunting. You can make points about civilized behavior and modern enlightenment, and I might cede them. I dont argue that there is some virtue specifically in killing furry helpless animals, but there is natural drives that precede and predicate natural skills, and theres no sense putting our species on trial for a priveleged moment on the known food chain. If you do, you just enter an inward spiral of intellectual abstracts, and it ends with everyone still having canines.

Likewise, it should be no surprise that we will generally prefer to hunt things that wont hurt us if we miss. If burgers were bears and had to be fought with instead of fried, I imagine we'd have far fewer of them.

I'd like to think all hunters and hunting culture was composed of people who appreciate all the parts of hunting, from outdoorsman skills and firearm discipline, to communion with the hunting grounds and respect for the quarry. But I know thats not true, and there are a lot of people who just cant find their balls unless they are blasting away at small critters. So I accept that the valued principles of these skills are enobled by survival, even if all the participants may not be...

Thanks for all the replies, this was my first post on this board and didn't know what to expect. I'll look into getting a pigeon, seems like the best bird for me.

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>>2342793

Like ranching and furring, there was a time when we did more than respect the animals that kept us alive, we positively celebrated them in art, legend and spirituality, and the struggle for life was appreciated. I grew up in rural surroundings, and remember seeing chicken and cattle designs in farmhouse art and dishes, and paintings of deer that flattered them in life, in the den next to a rifle cabinet. Bits of leather everywhere subtely reminded us how much animals governed and sustained our life.

Things have changed, obviously. Our food distribution is quite peculiar these days, and has enabled some truely awful things from truely horrible ideas. But I do like to think we can come back to some decency someday, and maybe find that balance again, where we celebrate all the wonderful creatures that keep us alive and remind us what we are, and that its not all bad at all.

I will now close this insomniac rambling and shut the heck up.

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>>2342795

Cool beans.

I hope you enjoy him/her. Please post back and let us know how its going.

Domesticated Doves or Pigeons. Ringnecks are good.

They don't squawk horribly loud, and the cooing noises are pretty pleasent.

You can either buy a bird harness or make one. Also, like any bird, they need time outside of the cage everyday to fly around.

>>2342795
If you're going to get a pigeon it really pays to do your research and make sure you vaccinate it! The only problem with pigeons is that they hate being lonely, so if you only get one then you need to be able to spend almost every hour it's awake with it. If you cant then get it a Lady pigeon. Also, housing is a bit pricey if you do get two and want them to have a cage/coop they'll be spending most of their time in. There's also the indoor or outdoor dilemma. You're going to have to check the predators in your area (like hawks and falcons and shit) to see if you can have outdoor pigeons. Indoor pigeons just need extra vitamins and exercise. There's forums for pigeon owners as well which would offer more extensive and experienced advice.

>>2342807
>If you cant then get it a Lady pigeon
If I get two males will they be prison gay or will one kill the other?

>>2342809
No. They'll get confused and either choose you as a mate or each other. It won't be prison rape because the matting ritual has to be consensual. Pigeons aren't ducks. They mate for life.

>>2342809
They can be territorial though. I'm not sure exactly how to introduce two pigeons into one cage unless their a couple already.

>>2342812
>choose you as a mate
will they try to hump my hand?

>>2342816
Maybe. Some have. Mostly they'll just preen you and do a matting dance. Pigeons aren't awfully sexual. Tbh its not very much of a big deal. They might also try to regurgitate food next to you for you to eat, but they only eat seeds so they only throw up wet seeds. Easily cleaned up.

>>2342775
>You are anthropomorphizing really hard right now.
Ok? Am I wrong? My goal is to communicate the gist of raptor behavior, not write a scientifically complete research paper.

>>2342898
Also, the person I was responding to seemed more likely to understand it the way I put it.

>>2342654
I don't know, but I love birds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ba9ToDVwNKY