What a paradoxical title, right? It may seem that way, but in reality, it makes perfect sense to consider it. The thing is, animals are not fully free even in 'freedom,' and in captivity, their freedom is not completely restricted. And this should make us reflect: Can I make the animals in my care freer?
The concept of 'freedom
For my part, I see more and more parrot caretakers (as you know, I’ve worked with parrots for over 12 years) becoming aware that they are caring for a wild animal. An animal that has not gone through a domestication process and, therefore, faces greater difficulties adapting to a life in captivity that deprives it of the freedoms of the wild world. As a result, many of these caretakers are asking themselves this question more and more often: What can I do to make my parrot freer?
And the answer is not trivial. The truth is that 'freedom' is such an intangible concept, yet so romantic, that there are few occasions when it is used without being distorted. However, it is a concept closely linked to animal welfare, especially when we talk about highly developed and complex individuals from a cognitive perspective, such as many birds, like corvids or parrots, primates (including humans), cetaceans, and countless other animal groups.
Is their freedom in the wild total?
Although there are many definitions that can be attributed to the term 'freedom' depending on the discipline from which it is approached, not all of them fit the reality we are dealing with. As I mentioned in the introduction to this post, I believe that freedom should be understood as a continuum, with infinite degrees of freedom between the maximum freedom of animals living in the wild and the minimum freedom (each person can choose the example that seems worst to them). Therefore, there is no duality between the absolutely free animal and the absolutely oppressed animal.
Obviously, a wild parrot faces situations over which it has no control; situations where the right decision is so obvious that it doesn't even need to be made through a reasoning process. For example, being attacked by a predator is an undesirable event for the prey, but it does not have the option to choose whether it wants it to happen or not. The subsequent flight response is not a decision made consciously, but rather an almost instinctive reaction. Likewise, this same animal has no control over certain environmental variables, such as the day-night cycle or the weather, when it lives in the wild.
These are just some examples showing that the environment in which a 'free' animal lives (as a real environment) also influences its behavior in certain ways, and therefore, does not allow it to be completely free in the purest sense of the word. However, facing these challenges is something that the wild animal is intrinsically prepared for, and despite the acute stress they might experience at a given moment, it does not lead to distress (long-term stress) that ultimately diminishes its well-being, nor its cognitive and social abilities, as often happens with their captive counterparts. Therefore, although animals living in the wild are not absolutely free animals, we can consider that they are as free as an individual of their species can possibly be.
Its freedom in captivity is (partly) in your hands.
On the other hand, animals living under human care are subjected to permanent confinement in an environment with substantially fewer possibilities, which generally prevents them from satisfying many of their motivations and needs. It's like when, in a video game, you can't do everything you feel the need to do. I remember when I was little and I tried to open every door, explore every corner, interact in certain ways with certain characters... but I couldn’t do everything I wanted. Eventually, I understood it was just a game, of course, and the possibilities were limited. But until I realized that, those situations caused me tremendous frustration: 'Why can't I open that door? Come on!'
I feel that animals in captivity sometimes experience something similar, with the difference being that they are not playing a game – it’s their life! It seems to me that this lack of freedom is what wild animals in captivity usually suffer from, since it’s us, their caregivers, who create their environment for our convenience and make it so that the animal has to adapt to our routines and needs. However, the good news is that, therefore, it is also us, the caregivers, who have the ability to offer them a better, more appropriate environment that provides them with greater freedom.
So, how do we understand the concept of 'freedom'?
Personally, applying it to the realm of animal welfare under human care, I would define 'freedom' as:
'The ability of an animal to make decisions autonomously in order to satisfy its motivations and needs within the environment in which it lives.'
Most animals, like humans, have a set of needs and motivations that they try to fulfill through the decisions they make when interacting with the environment they inhabit. So, when the environment does not offer them the possibility to make decisions on their own, their freedom is diminished, and their fate becomes completely subject to the impositions established by that same environment, which restricts their freedom. As a result, and this has been proven by science, when animals (especially those with high intellectual and cognitive development) are deprived of the ability to make decisions by providing them with a sterile and static environment, their well-being levels decrease drastically.
And since we don’t want that, we’ll try to take measures so that their environment isn’t like that. But how to do it, I’ll leave for other posts, as this one is getting too long, and I don’t want to bore anyone. So, as always, I encourage you to leave your comments below, share my work if you think these reflections should reach more people, and come back here to read me next week. A hug!
Roger Valls Martínez
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