Saliva Is Dangerous For Parrots

There has been a clip on the net for a couple of years that shows a bird on a countertop feeding long strands of pasta to a big dog waiting below. It's a cute video of communication between 2 kinds that aren't normally seen together.

While it's tender and cute, I cower every single time I view it. There are 2 parts to my discomfort. First, there is the belief of a prey creature and a predator communicating. I can not explain to you how numerous stories I have heard over the years about the family pet attacking the parrot.

Years ago, I believed that nothing is wrong with keeping my dog and cat together with my parrots. They had all been raised together and I continued with the false idea that the cat and dog “got“ that the parrots were surely off limits. They all got along well and without any incidents. Then one day, my cat caught and killed a bird and produced it to me as a gift.

I was terrified that my cat would hurt a bird and had to rethink the fact I was letting them all together. Nonetheless, they're tamed, cats are cats and hunting is a huge part of their instinct. Some popular dog breeds have characters bred into them that particularly grow their interest in parrots. Should there be a sudden attack, we would never be ready to sprint into action quickly enough to protect our parrots when something arouses the hunting instincts in our dog or cat, and the risks multiply when food is involved like it was in the clip.



The second problem of that clip is less known to several parrot owners and the point of this post:

the dangers of mammalian saliva. Dogs, Cats, gerbils, humans…all mammals… have a kind of bacteria in their bodies that are referred to as “gram negative” bacteria. It exists in our body fluids and we're prepared to handle it in healthy amounts. Parrots, though, don't have gram-negative bacteria in their bodies and aren't equipped to fight it. Saliva is the most popular manner to transmit gram-negative bacteria to parrots.

This suggests we should be cautious when we kiss our parrots and we should never let them eat from utensils or our mouths.


Photo of gram stain from medschool.lsuhsc.edu

Parrots are completely different from mammals physiologically and it's important for us to keep their environment as independent from our own, and that of our other pets, as possible.