Let Birds Masturbate

No matter what brought you here—if you live with or without birds, if you have lain awake at night pondering the problem of your parrot's predilection for wanking it in the wee hours, or if you have no clue that or how a bird might whack off in the first place—I am here to tell you that yes, it is OK for birds to masturbate. In fact, it is not just OK; it is natural. As such, the birds in your life should be allowed to beat off as they please, without your permission and certainly without your hindrance. (No, a bird did not write this blog, but I certainly hope a bird would approve of it.)

These are the conclusions of four researchers who want to set the record straight about bird masturbation, with a paper that led a great Guardian headline: "Masturbation among birds is ‘natural’ and should not be punished, say experts." Go off, experts! One of said experts speaks from personal experience. (She is not a bird.) Chloe Heys, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Lancashire in Preston, England, had a pet cockatiel named Billy, who masturbated up to 10 times a day during the breeding season. "She'd rescued Billy from a pretty nasty situation, and was worried his masturbation might be a sign of unhappiness," Tom Price, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Liverpool in England, told Audubon. "On the other hand, she thought he looked like he really enjoyed masturbating."

Should Billy be masturbating? If so, how much? These questions served as the basis of the new paper out in Ecology and Evolution, which takes to task the unjustly invisibilized history of birds fapping it, in and out of captivity.