blizzard loves nutriberries. theyre his favorite toy.
@why-animals-do-the-thing What’s this bird doing?
This is totally play behavior. And it’s adorable.
hi! im the owner of this goffin’s cockatoo and yea, wadtt is correct! i know it seems a bit confusing as to why hes displaying this behavior. i honestly thought it was a really weird quirk? and i was a bit worried because if hes excited enough he could do this for quite a while! at his annual checkup i addressed the behavior to my avian vet and he said that based on his experiences with goffins, its 100% a goffin play behavior. every single goffin you come across will do this. but i still wasnt sure what hes trying to accomplish out of it, so i did some research!
blizzard here might be displaying a behavior called anting. its something that a lot of bird species do, but i hear about it a lot from goffin owners specifically! pretty much, in the wild, they pick up ants in their beak, crush them to release formic acid, and rub it like a balm over their skin/feathers. it could act as an insecticide apparently but not many studies have been done on it. in captivity, where ants arent exactly abundant, birds use small objects like pellets as a substitute. but its still not clear why they enjoy doing that? not a lot of research has been done on anting, but theres a few theories out there. anting was the only explanation i could find but it just doesnt sit right with me tbh because blizzard gets REALLY into it. like, if hes on top of his cage and has nothing to play with then he will legitimately bite off a piece of my window frame and play this game lmao (we dont let him on top of the cage anymore bc we didnt want him doing that). so i think its a mix of natural instinct and play behavior!
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