kr0c:
Ripley has a very good grasp of the word “touch” and we often use it as a command word to get him to try to be less afraid of new things or to ask his permission to pet him. He knows if we ask him to “touch” a person or object, he’ll be praised for gently tapping his beak against it. He also knows exactly what we mean when we ask him not to touch something,
Today I yelled at him for biting the wall and he did probably the pettiest thing I’ve ever seen him do: he went around touching stuff in the room and saying “no” and staring at me to make sure I was watching him do it.
I love that you ask permission to touch him, and also that he’s apparently a petty little shit.
Grey parrot body language can be kind of hard to read, so we figured out pretty quickly that we had to give Ripley some kind of warning before we tried to pet him, or he would bite us.
He gets really offended if you don’t ask “can I touch you?” before trying to pet him.We also used it to teach him body parts like head/back/wing/tummy/toes. (He now calls our hands “toes” and asks to touch them a lot.)
QueerGalaxies 