this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
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I knew a parrot once who would bite the shit out of you and then LAUGH!
This could be total bullshit, but the way I've heard it is that our pain response can trigger something like a "play" response for certain birds. The reaction is a form of encouragement.
Sometimes I think about how different the “cultures” of various species are and how difficult it would be to communicate if animals were able to talk and interact in society as nonhuman people. Dogs and cats have it hard enough as it is with the very divergent meanings of a wagging tail, but everyone would be on edge around all the smiling humans, for example.
We even have trouble with cultural shit within our own species! Smiling like that all the time would warn me away and I'm from a culture that generally likes smiling. In our closest living genetic relative, the chimpanzee, a toothy smile means "I'm ready to tear your arm/balls off."