(09-08-2013, 01:41 AM)Eudora13 Wrote: I'm sorry, but I find this very hard to accept! I might be on the wrong end here, but I feel birds should not be turned into pets to begin with. It's well and good if you can set up an aviary for them and allow them to fly about. But clipping their wings and putting them in cages, it's unacceptable. I've had a friend who did the same with her giant parrot. It pained me to see her shuffle around in the cage, and mind you, it was a big cage. Birds are meant to be flying about, that's what they stand for (barring a few, which could be kept as pets I suppose). Just as setting them free in the wrong habitat is bad for them, I feel taking them away from their natural habitat and putting them up with toys is as bad.
I really apologize for sounding so harsh. This is a little too touchy a topic.
I have to say that whether you like it or not, it is already a fact that many birds are pets of humans for many generations. Nobody can change this fact. What's done is already done. Whether it is ethical to make their ancestors pets is irrelevant here. They have lost their ability to survive on their own many generations ago.
"Birds are meant to be flying about"... I can't understand you. Would you say "cats and dogs are meant to be running about"? It just like when people "release" a dog or a cat, it is actually unethical to do that because these pets are unable to fend for themselves. You release them, you are dooming them to death. You are not "freeing" them by any means, you are in fact abandoning them. Abandoning is the right word to use.
It's like if we "release" a human into a complete wildness away from any other humans. Can this human survive on his/her own without interaction with other humans? I very much doubt most humans can even survive that despite the fact we consider ourselves as the smartest. We simply do not have the ability to live on our own without the society around us any more.
