mutations in avairy birds.

mutations in avairy birds.
03-05-2008

I went to a small bird show last weekend. They had the usual variety of canaries and budgies. They were O.K.
What really gave me the shits were the mutated parrots. They had opaline princesses and blue scarlet breasted parrots.
These people are crazy. There is no prettier parrots that the natural form princess and scarlet breasted. It's the same with plenty of other natives .
I guess I'm old school when it comes to my Aussie native parrots. Leave them alone. stop the mutations.

Am i a whinger or do people agree?

03-05-2008

I agree 100%. I hate mutations in parrots.

04-05-2008

I agree boof. The natural variety of the bird is what it should remain as.

04-05-2008

I would wholeheartedly agree. From the perspective of a zoo professional I believe we should be showing our visitors what these animals look like in the wild, not the product of genetic experimentation. Princess parrots are truly beautiful--let's let them remain so!

04-05-2008

Mutations aren't confined to Parrotlike birds either- they're in finches and waterfowl too. Some, like the white breasted Gouldian finches seem totally pointless, you couldn't better the wild species for beauty and these are just so unnatractive. And what about pure white Mandarin ducks- why bother?

The problem with mutations is that in captivity at least, there's a danger they can outnumber the normal birds so eventually the normal coloured birds become a rarity...

04-05-2008

the thing is that people like things that are different from the norm. Personally I like animals in their natural form but for the majority of people (probably not the ones on here though!) a white tiger or a piebald peacock seems way more interesting than a stripy tiger or blue peacock because its not something they could see normally. As Pertinax says above though, sometimes it seems very pointless -- albino neon tetras for example!

The other side of course is that for breeders the wierd-looking animals are more valuable than the regular kind, so its in their best interest to breed blue and gold macaws in blue and white or whatever.

04-05-2008

I definitely prefer wild type. I find this annoying in snakes too, everyone seems to be breeding different coloured corns and pythons. It just seems stupid.

04-05-2008

There does seem to be a big market in the pet trade worldwide for many colours in Birds, reptiles and fish often bringing big price tags, heard there are some Black Galahs flying around near Brisbane.

04-05-2008

Do you mean flying around in an avairy or in the wild?

04-05-2008

In the wild Boof

04-05-2008

Colour mutations in aviary birds are annoying but what really chesses me off is when breeders selectivly breed for features that are detrimental to an animals wellfare. An example of this is the larger heads on British Budgies which can cause problems for the birds in such things as perching.

04-05-2008

Don't want to contradict myself by saying that I would like to see them when i have been critising mutations but they sound interesting.

I working on a building site in Hornsby, north of Sydney that had a pure black magpie that would come on site.

04-05-2008

I saw a type of budgie on TV that had curley feathers and it was so puffy that it couldn't eat, drink, crap or see properly and it couldn't fly either. It needed around the clock attention to keep it alive. i felt so sorry for it.

04-05-2008

That sounds like a particular chromosome defect that can occur.

05-05-2008

I hate the deliberate keeping and breeding of mutants - but it's what people have always done with animals.
Look at the poor goldfish and what has been done to it. Actually fishkeepers are probably the worst offenders - people seem to be determined to do their worst to magnificent cichlids like discus and oscars and the appalling cross-bred and deformed 'parrot' cichlids and 'flower horns' truly disgust me.
The only positive I can find is that Darwin learned a lot from the different varieties of the domestic pigeon.

Alan

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