"Lovebites" or play biting?

[Ingeborg]

Our family is pretty fresh with our parrot, even though we've both had birds earlier in our life. We have had our AG, named Ingeborg, since late april, and I guess we are still learning to know her - her likes, dislikes moods and sometimes naughty behaviour. I am the man in the family and Ingeborg has definitely connected strongest to me - I'm more or less able to do whatever I want with her. She is very trusting, and has no problems letting me touch her more or less all the time.

 

I know about her "leave me alone" bites (however, she actually rarly bites me just moves away or crunches down so I can't get to her feet (when she's tired and doesn't want to take the effort to move into the cage ). I know about her "stop messing inside my cage" bites, and also her "I'm getting pretty darned annoyed with this toy, and everyone who has ever been in contact with it" bites. And not to forget - "I didn't like that you tried to teach me that" bites that happens when she's sitting quietly on my hand after doing some kind of unwanted training exercise. It's like - here, have this after trying to make me go close to the sink to take a bath. Most of the time I just let her bite me without moving my hand away, trying to talk softly to her at the same time - she rarly bites hard enough for it to hurt, even though I know that she's more than able to.

 

What I'm wondering about is her kind of soft and careful biting when I'm cuddling with her (she is very cuddly in the afternoon and evening). She is twitching and turning her head (180 degrees and more) to try and slowly nip at my fingers when I'm scratching her neck. There are no signs of her not liking it, or attempts to get away - quite the contrary. She doesn't really bite in a way that hurts, but just squeezes her beak around my finger. However, if I let her continue she will bite a little harder, as if she gets a little too excited.

 

My assunption is that she's actually just doing this to play, but I haven't seen anyone mentioning this when discussing african greys and biting. Does anyone have any experience with this, or anything to indicate whether I'm right or wrong?

[danmcq]

Those are "Love Bites" and their way of letting you know they are liking whats happening. They do the same in the wild to each other. :-)

[Char]

When Whisper does this when I am scratching her I stop scratching. Sometimes she asks for the scratch but it seems I am doing it all wrong hence the little correction she gives me with her beak.

 

Sometimes I think it just does not feel good to them whether because of pen feathers or not doing it quiet right but whenever she does this I just stop and refuse no matter how much she asks. I won't encourage biting. Like you said it is light at first and then gets harder.

 

Don't get me wrong.. I play with whisper and she beaks me playfully and to giver me direction but as soon as the bite gets a little to hard then the game is over. The thing is she knows when she beaks me too hard when we are playing.. she will say OOPS!

[Trustdace]

I have noticed the same behavior with my CAG IngeBorg. I know when she's doing the love bites and that's cool I allow her to do that. My hands are fairly rough so when she has tried to bite me hard I don't pull my hand away because I can take the bite and im afraid that if I do pull my hand away she could tell and therfore develop the biting habit. But now she has found that when she bites the very tip of my fingers it does inflict some considerable pain and she has bit me hard some times already. When she has bit the tip of my fingers hard I have yelled "OUCH!!" So now when she realizes that she bites me a little hard she says "OUCH" This went on for a while and I had to find a way to correct this biting. Just yesterday I went to grab her right wing and fan it out because she had got her feathers caught on the cage bars and she bit the crap out of the tip of my thumb. So I told her no! And I put her back in the cage. Now everytime she bites me I immediately place her in the cage and she gets no "out time". It seems to be working because she has kind of stopped.

[Azzie]

With Cleo, I've noticed a definite distinction with what Dan calls love bites, and Cleo's play biting.

 

The love bites are when she just holds a finger in her beak without any pressure at all. Sometimes this is followed by a jack hammer head motion and some wing flapping and baby squeaks, almost as if she is trying to feed from my finger. At other times Cleo ever so gently nibbles on my lip or earlobe.

 

The play biting is definitely a lot rougher, but more of a pinch than a real bite, as it does not draw blood. It still hurts like hell though, especially when she gets carried away with playing and clamps on to the bridge of my nose. This play biting is also accompanied by pinning pupils, a lot of noise and lots of wing flapping.

 

Only twice have I been properly bitten by Cleo where she drew blood, in the first few weeks of having her home. It was entirely my fault as I was pushing her into doing something she did not want to do, and I ignored the warning signs.