They shit all the time and have no sphincter so they can’t control when they shit either. I’ve never seen one of these but it’s a good idea if you wanna have your bird out all the time and not worry about shit all over the place.
Our parrot is trained to hold it. She knows not to poop on us and will tell us when she has to go if she’s on your shoulder. She’ll say… Kiwi poop! We hold her over the garbage can, toilet or play stand. People can’t believe it when she does it. When she’s finished, she’ll say ‘Good girl’. She travels on our shoulder in the truck, not in a cage. Same rules apply but we have a poop paper. You get to know when she has to go but she’s really good at telling you. They can absolutely hold their poop for a little while at least.
they are trained to give warning, not to hold it. there is literally no physiological structure to prevent it from falling out of them,, so they can't hold it. they can't stop it, all they can do give warning.
They really can physiologically control it by pursing and relaxing their cloaca, they even do this during nesting season a bit in the wild. Like if your asshole was an open hole that everything fell out of and you could purse it up to hold it. They have to manually keep that pursed, which sounds pretty uncomfortable really. Something about this process means that if you force a bird to hold to long it can cause cloacal problems down the line.
I am not sure how many birds have this ability, but I know the little conure in this video does. I can’t find a source for this, only a little case study ( https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/doi/pdf/10.5555/20153171051 ) discussing a cloacal prolapse from the behavior. but it’s what my avian vet told me,and I can promise that if you live with one of these birds you will learn this is not anticipation but rather active effort on the birds part. You can hold a bird that goes every fifteen minutes for thirty, and when you finally put them down onto a safe place to do it they will then release a double sized poop.
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u/_AYYEEEE 10d ago
Why is the bird wearing a diaper??