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.
Unjustly invisibilized? That's a strong claim.
It's not surprising why scientists have been historically loath to study bird masturbation. Science is famously stodgy and, as such, skirts taboo topics. So sex outside the bounds of reproduction—any number of behaviors and techniques including masturbation, same-sex sex, and sex during pregnancy—has often gone unrecorded in official scientific literature.
The literature that did exist concerning sex beyond the bounds of reproduction was also steeped in bias. Many scientists assumed masturbation was a human thing, or at least a primate thing, in part because it's easier to recognize masturbation in an animal that has a hand. So when the field of ethology blew up in the 1960s and '70s, the first detailed studies of sex and orgasm in animals were focused on mammals. Also, science often defined masturbation as something that resulted in ejaculation, a definition that excluded female animals. Records of animal masturbation were largely confined to vertebrates, with some usual suspects (dolphins, horses, gibbons) as well as some novelty contenders (marine iguanas and Adélie penguins.)
OK, but how do birds masturbate without a hand to, you know, jork it?
I'm glad you asked that question. All questions are welcome here. Again, this blog is a safe space for both people who are overly familiar with bird masturbation and people who had never considered it before but have found their interests respectfully piqued as any ordinary person's would be, right?
Both male and female birds have a cloaca, which is an all-purpose hole used for peeing, pooping, and sex (and egg-laying in females.) A male bird transfers sperm from his cloaca, and a female bird accepts sperm in her cloaca. As you might have gathered by now, masturbation in birds revolves around the cloaca. A masturbating bird will rub their cloaca on a twig or a toy. In this light, bird masturbation can actually be quite adorable. Take, for example, this video of a yellow budgie "balancing" on top of a yellow tennis ball. Look at them go!
Masturbation is deeply familiar to the Reddit community of r/budgies, where users posted so many videos of their budgies masturbating that the mods had to revise the subreddit's rules so that "any content that shows budgies breeding, mating, or masturbating will be removed." But before this totalitarian crackdown, budgie beat-off videos were a dime a dozen. Consider the case of Blueberry, who likes to grind on his swing. Think of Orville, who likes to rub against his pebble. Ponder the countless unnamed budgies who simply wanted to hump a hand, a bell, a plastic toy, an orange cap, or their own reflection.
What if I want to see a bird jork it on top of celebrity multi-hyphenate Stephen Fry?
A reasonable request. Here you go.
Does it feel good for the bird?
It's hard to say. Some research shows that the cloaca lack the nerve clusters that give mammalian penises and clitorises their extraordinary sensitivity, suggesting that birds might not experience orgasm the same way mammals do, the authors write. But the penis evolved from the cloaca. "Therefore, the idea that birds may have sex for pleasure has likely been dismissed prematurely," the authors write.
Why would an animal masturbate if it didn't feel good?
Another great question. Scientists have many theories that could explain why birds, or any other animal, for that matter, would be inclined to masturbate. Fapping takes time and energy. One theory suggests that masturbation might be a byproduct of the neuroendocrine mechanisms of sexual arousal. Another suggests that masturbation might increase reproductive success. In female primates, for example, sexual arousal and orgasm can ease the passage of sperm. For male primates, masturbation can get rid of old sperm and make way for fresher, heartier swimmers. Another theory suggests that masturbation can also reduce the risk of STIs, as long as it happens after copulation. Masturbation can also serve as practice for the real thing, increasing an organism's chance at successful reproduction. All of these theories could be true at the same time, with wanking offering an animal different benefits depending on its age, sex, or reproductive strategy.
So why won't people let their birds masturbate?
Purity culture comes for us all! (This is only half a joke. It's not hard to imagine that many people feel uncomfortable knowing their cute little pet is a sexual being, with urges. Sorry that your animal is horny!) While scientific research on bird masturbation is rare, anecdotal observation by bird owners is vast. The behavior is often framed as a "problem," one that is linked to cloacal disease or aggressive or harmful behaviors, such as feather plucking or screaming. These observations have led people to conclude that masturbation is a negative response to captivity. It makes sense to prevent birds from harming themselves or decreasing the quality of their life with frequent masturbation, which is absolutely possible. (Out of kindness I will not hyperlink anything related to the phrase "cloacal prolapse.")
But, the authors write, many within the captive bird community now consider masturbation an abnormal behavior that is a result of living in captivity. Bird owners try to prevent their birds from masturbating by offering them a mate, removing toys or perches that they use to masturbate, and switching them to a lower-energy diet. Some take even more extreme approaches, giving their birds drugs or hormones to suppress their urges, or even desexing female birds whose masturbation leads to health problems.
But after surveying bird experts and bird keepers and trawling through observations in 120 bird species, the researchers concluded that not only is masturbation not a result of captivity, but that wild birds masturbate more than captive ones. They found many different species of birds that masturbated, with both females and males (although males were more likely to do it.)
So which birds wank the most?
The researchers received the most observations of parrots, but also found evidence of the behavior in turkeys, chickens, gulls, pigeons, and many species of duck, as well as the little auk, the red-legged seriema, the black-necked stilt, the wood thrush, the tooth-billed bowerbird, and more. And the notable abundance of parrots might be related to the fact that the birds are commonly kept in captivity and thus more readily studied than something like, say, a secretary bird (wanking status unknown.)
So should I be encouraging my bird to beat it?
No, and that's a weird thing to ask. Just as you don't need to stop your budgie from gooning, you shouldn't push them toward it. Only a cockatoo knows how much it wants to masturbate. All these researchers are saying is that this behavior is normal and natural for a bird and that well-meaning owners should not go to extreme lengths to deny their birds self-pleasure. The least we can do is leave them, and their cloacae, to their own devices.
