Contrafreeloading Indicating the Behavioural Need to Forage in Healthy and Feather Damaging Grey Parrots

SIMPLE SUMMARY: When given the choice, many animals will opt to put in effort to obtain their food even when the same food is readily available in a food bowl nearby. This behaviour, termed contrafreeloading, illustrates the importance of providing so-called foraging opportunities, which allow animals to search and work for food, much like their wild counterparts. However, in animals with abnormal behaviours, e.g., parrots with feather damaging behaviour (FDB), this motivation to work for food may no longer be present. This study therefore aimed to determine whether healthy and feather damaging parrots differ in their motivation to contrafreeload by offering them the choice between “free food” from a food bowl or “earned food” that needed to be extracted from a foraging device. Feather damaging parrots were found to spend less time and consume lower amounts of food from the foraging device, demonstrating they were indeed less inclined to work for food than healthy birds. Nevertheless, all birds used the foraging device, and of those with FDB that used the device the most, plumage also improved the most. These findings emphasize that foraging opportunities should be provided to captive parrots to satisfy their motivation to work for food and forage. ABSTRACT: Contrafreeloading (CFL) is a concept that describes the preference of an animal to work for food even when identical food is freely available, and reflects an intrinsic motivation to engage in foraging-related activities. However, altered brain neurochemistry, which can be induced by chronic exposure to a suboptimal living environment, may affect this intrinsic motivation in animals with abnormal repetitive behaviours (ARBs), including parrots with feather damaging behaviour. To determine whether this was the case, we evaluated CFL activity in healthy (n = 11) and feather damaging (n = 10) Grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus) by offering them a free choice to obtain identical food from a food bowl or from a foraging device. Differences in CFL activity were observed, with feather damaging Grey parrots displaying less CFL (as indicated by shorter foraging times and lower amounts of food consumed from the foraging devices) compared to healthy conspecifics, indicating altered ‘motivation’ and time allocation, for which the underlying mechanism needs to be clarified further. Nevertheless, despite the variable level, all birds displayed CFL, which, together with a seemingly positive correlation between CFL activity and the plumage condition of the birds, suggests that parrots are intrinsically motivated to forage and highlights the importance of providing foraging opportunities to captive parrots.