LobsterFeng said:
Zhukov said:
I feel kinda the same towards birds. Especially if you need to keep them in a cage. Although I once met a guy with a tawny frogmouth owl for a pet, and that bird was awesome.
Birds can be great pets but you got to pay for the really expensive trained ones that will sit on your shoulder and stuff.
Parrots, and a number of other common pet birds, live in social groups in the wild. They're social animals that need attention and mental stimulation to be happy and healthy. Birds make great, affectionate pets as long as you know how to care for them and keep them from getting bored/upset--and no, that's not just from the "really expensive trained ones," because you CAN train a bird yourself the same way you can with a dog. In fact they may even learn faster, if you're dealing with a more intelligent species.
OT:
Reptiles can make awesome pets, as long as you know what you're doing with them. I guess it's true they won't show the same KIND of affection that a mammal would, but that doesn't mean they're totally cold or heartless. One of the bigger types of lizards that people own, tegus, are apparently fairly smart, and I've seen at least one video of them ignoring food in favor of climbing on the human bringing them their meal, as if to demand attention from him.
I wouldn't say that reptiles are necessarily as smart as mammals, but they're certainly not soulless or without personality. It's pretty silly to say that they're just "for show/cool factor" pets when I know people form very strong bonds with just about any pet they own, even ones that don't show a great deal of affection back. My best friend's mom absolutely adored the bearded dragons they owned, to the point she was completely devastated when one of them died.