Amy Hribar Graduate Student (Master Program) Major Professor: James Millam Phone: 530-752-4498 FAX: 530-752-0175 E-mail: alhribar@ucdavis.edu

Education

B.S.,Psychobiology, Long Island University – Southampton College, Southampton, NY, 2003
M.S.,Avian Science, UC Davis, Davis, CA, in progess

Project

Evaluation of Enrichment Device Preference in the Orange-winged Amazon

Housing parrots in barren or minimalistic cages may fundamentally affect their biology and behavior, impair their welfare, and influence the results of behavioral and biological tests. Providing parrots with enrichment devices that engage their behavior may forestall such potential pitfalls. We hypothesize that Orange-winged Amazon parrots (Amazona amazonica), because of their likely ability to discriminate colors, will display preferences among enrichment devices of different colors. Twelve individually housed parrots are currently provided with colored objects (dyed rawhide) suspended from cage ceilings. The extent to which each color engages parrot behavior is being quantified by computer monitored, multi-position switches. Objects of seven different colors are being offered two at a time for a total of twenty-one separate combinations. The difference in behavior engagement between the differently colored devices (measured in seconds spent interacting with each device) will be calculated for each of the twenty-one comparisons. Paired t statistics will determine if these differences differ significantly from zero, indicating whether one dyed device is preferred over another. These tests will be performed for males and females, and two and three year-olds separately, and for all birds combined.