Baby Parrots!
Yesterday, I went to see my beautiful Rosanna and she decided to go to a pet store to look at the animals. She often does this sort of thing because she loves animals even more than me.
So we went to Petco, which is a big pet store over in Alameda. They have a separate room there where they keep lots of birds in a warm environment. The pet store worker let us play with the baby parrots.
The sun conures in particular were really beautiful fascinating creatures. They had brilliant plumage and bright little eyes. They liked to grasp our fingers with their talons and pick at or squeeze our fingers with their powerful little nut-cracker beaks. At first they were afraid to let us stroke their soft feathers but eventually they came to trust us and we sent them into happy ecstasies in which their eyes would half-close as we tickled against the grain.
Really, it was mutual grooming, which is a major social activity of these intelligent creatures. Conures are not the smartest of parrots -- their brains are smaller than those of the famous African Grays -- and these were babies; fledglings only a few months old. But it was obvious, interacting with them, that there were _minds_ in there. I'd guess they were probably at least as smart as monkeys, or the lesser apes such as siamangs, at an equivalent stage of development.
This fills me with wonder about the richness of mind and the preciousness of sentient life. They were such little things -- vulnerable and fragile by our standards -- each of them weighed less than one of my hands. As brute matter, none of them was very much.
Yet inside that tiny package was a mind capable of perceiving its own identity, capable of learning how to communicate with humans whose _brains_ were vaster its whole body. The fast little pulse that I could feel against my fingertip when I stroked a feathered breast supported a mind and soul that loved its own life as much as I love mine.
Such a thing is precious: worthy of care and love and protection. And how many such things are there in the world besides humans, living and dying and going wholly unregarded by us, by a mental outlook which most humans have that holds only human life important?
Parrots are worthwhile. And I now, finally, understand why people are so able to love their pet birds.
They can love you back.
- Jordan
So we went to Petco, which is a big pet store over in Alameda. They have a separate room there where they keep lots of birds in a warm environment. The pet store worker let us play with the baby parrots.
The sun conures in particular were really beautiful fascinating creatures. They had brilliant plumage and bright little eyes. They liked to grasp our fingers with their talons and pick at or squeeze our fingers with their powerful little nut-cracker beaks. At first they were afraid to let us stroke their soft feathers but eventually they came to trust us and we sent them into happy ecstasies in which their eyes would half-close as we tickled against the grain.
Really, it was mutual grooming, which is a major social activity of these intelligent creatures. Conures are not the smartest of parrots -- their brains are smaller than those of the famous African Grays -- and these were babies; fledglings only a few months old. But it was obvious, interacting with them, that there were _minds_ in there. I'd guess they were probably at least as smart as monkeys, or the lesser apes such as siamangs, at an equivalent stage of development.
This fills me with wonder about the richness of mind and the preciousness of sentient life. They were such little things -- vulnerable and fragile by our standards -- each of them weighed less than one of my hands. As brute matter, none of them was very much.
Yet inside that tiny package was a mind capable of perceiving its own identity, capable of learning how to communicate with humans whose _brains_ were vaster its whole body. The fast little pulse that I could feel against my fingertip when I stroked a feathered breast supported a mind and soul that loved its own life as much as I love mine.
Such a thing is precious: worthy of care and love and protection. And how many such things are there in the world besides humans, living and dying and going wholly unregarded by us, by a mental outlook which most humans have that holds only human life important?
Parrots are worthwhile. And I now, finally, understand why people are so able to love their pet birds.
They can love you back.
- Jordan