The only real finding was that it was progressively less severe, the more neighbors the birds had. It reinforces this general message of how important physical and social enrichment for these birds really is. Well thought-out physical and social environments should be first thing we think of.
Owners need to give birds a really long line of sight to doorways or the approach of people. Don't put them next to a window where people are going to suddenly walk by.
A lot of the time I will go in a room and see that three or four animals right next door to each other are feather pickers, but that doesn't mean that they've learned it from each other. We wondered if unsocial things in the environment might be responsible for this apparent clumping of behavior.
It leads to an obvious change to suggest to people. You don't want to have your bird on the edge of a kitchen island or something where someone can come in and surprise him.
The obvious explanation is it's kind of a surprise thing, the sudden sort of visual arrival of human beings, and this was something we didn't expect at all.
There is a lot of merit in studying abnormal behaviors just in terms of figuring out ways to control them for the welfare of both companion animals and those bred for production agriculture. Another benefit is that if animal abnormal behavior is caused in the same way as in humans, then we may have a whole new range of model animals for studying human mental disorders.
The feather picking in the Orange-winged Amazons has a very strong genetic component. Another effect, and this blew us away, was where the cage was in the room relative to the door.
Essentially, a parrot is a monkey with wings.
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