#i have physical confinements but i must stim

[bertybum]

I don't really have anything to add to this, just please listen to this album

[theramseyloft]

Hi! I'm looking into pigeons as a pet, and I'm interested in training them and actually playing with them. I have parrots (conures and budgies mostly) What would you recommend? And what are the biggest differences between parrots and pigeons? I know pigeons can't climb and that they need grit. Can they still eat fruit and veggies?

Parrots are incredibly physically dangerous for pigeons.

Like: Do not under any circumstance allow them to be in the same room dangerous.

Parrots can break the bones of a pigeon by accident, and the dust pigeons produce gum up the lungs of parrots.

If the parrots are human social, then getting a new smart bird that can’t be housed near your resident smart birds and needs some amount of your time every day to itself will feel, to your parrots, like you are suddenly ignoring them for no reason, and it will spark some behavioral problems that will scare the pigeon.

So I do not recommend any one with any species of psitticine add any species of columbid to their house hold, unless the columbids are going in a loft outside.

Buut, that arrangement means that they can’t be household companions, by definition.

For people trying to choose between Pigeon or some psitticine species,  Or for some one who is used to caring for psitticines considering whether or not they want to try something different with out sacrificing the intelligence and bonding potential:

Pigeons and parrots are so drastically physiologically and socially different from each other that there is absolutely no cross over what so ever.

They can’t use the same type of enclosure, they can’t eat the same diet, their social structures are completely different, even their intelligence is completely different, despite both being literally on level ground with a 5 year old human child.

Parrot cages are designed around displaying a bird that stands upright and can climb.

Pigeons forage on the ground and need WAY more floor space than height.

Pigeons can’t climb, fly straight up, or even comfortably stand on a round perch. They take off at a 45 degree angle and have to spiral to get up high in a tight space.

They cannot tolerate all the toys parrots need, not only because they physically cannot manipulate them and are instinctively startled by bright oranges, reds, and yellows, but because pigeons need as clear and uncluttered a flight space as possible.

So a pigeon in a parrot cage physically cannot get off the floor, no matter how much height you give them, and is both physically trapped and severely psychologically distressed by what parrots consider vital enrichment.

If they must be caged singly, a dog crate with flat perches is ideal for a pigeon, provided that the bird is allowed frequent flight time.

Parrots need a huge variety of fruits, nuts, nectar, greens, and veggies.

Pigeons are strict seed eaters. They literally are not physically capable of digesting ANYthing else. They get 0 benefit from greens, fruit, vegitable flesh, leaves, stems, or tubers, and will starve on a full stomache if you give those to them. 

Gonna repeat myself here because veterinarians that care for birds either learn based on parrots and finches or on chickens (Depending on whether they took the exotics or livestock rout). Their advice to vary the base diet of a pigeon away from seeds is given in error based off of two COMPLETELY different physiologies and WILL make recovery impossible for a malnourished bird and malnourish a healthy bird because Pigeons literally lack the physiological equipment to process anything other than embryonic plant tissue.

Pigeons cannot detect sweetness, so they literally do not even get the yummy treat benefit of fruit. 

Please, DO NOT even “treat” pigeons with non-seed items.

Parrots are mechanical problem solvers and sound mimics, much like many of the corvids.

Pigeons are not physically capable of much in the way of mechanical manipulation, so they physically cannot manupulate the toys designed for parrots.

Their foraging is exclusively strolling along the ground and picking up fallen seed.

 Parrot flocks are pretty much just a huge crowd of birds all commuting in the same direction. Individuals do what ever they are going to do independent of the flock as a whole.

Pigeon flocks are uniquely cooperative, tight knit family units that vote on the fly on everything they do. They are social learning pattern mappers, actively, directly instructed by their fathers once they wean on both foraging and fitting into the social dynamic of their flock.

Parrot enrichment is thus mostly mechanical and designed for individuals. Puzzles to manipulate, brightly colored fruit like things to find that are hard and pleasant to stim on by biting.

Pigeon enrichment can be forage based, nest building based, or social based, with social interaction being the most vital of the three.

Pure foraging with no social interaction involves a box filled with sand, straw, or both with some favorite seeds like safflower or parakeet seed scattered in there for them to find.

Nesting enrichment is just straw, or Q-tips with the tips cut off and a place for the bird to put them.

Unlike parrots, Pigeons can recognize themselves in mirrors and their play with their reflection is more of a human like fascination with their own appearance than yelling at or trying to court what they mistake for another bird.

Pigeons are pattern mappers that learn socially both through observation and direct instruction.

And their pattern mapping is not exclusively visual. 

They pick up on auditory patterns, patterns of behavior and the cross over between the two just as easily as they pick up on visual patterns of geographical lay out.

When I describe humans as learning exactly like a human child, I mean that very literally.

Pigeons are capable of high level cognition. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releas…/2009/…/090212141143.htm

To the extent that they understand the concepts of space and time! https://www.sciencedaily.com/releas…/2017/…/171204144805.htm

They are self-aware enough to distinguish themselves from other pigeons, able to recognize themselves in photos, video, and mirrors AND differentiate between the three. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releas…/2008/…/080613145535.htm

Their brains are wired SHOCKINGLY similarly to ours: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releas…/2013/…/130717095336.htm

They categorize things and learn the equivalent of words the same way human toddlers do!

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releas…/2014/…/140402095107.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releas…/2015/…/150204184447.htm

They can even learn to read written language well enough to differentiate between a real word and an acronym with the same number of letters.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releas…/2016/…/160919111535.htm

They are pattern mapping social learners.  Exactly like we are!

They can literally learn to understand both spoken AND written human language, and literally all it takes is talking to a pigeon as if it is a nonverbal human toddler who does not know that word yet to be able to teach them to understand object words, action words, emotion words, names, and locations.

Pigeons are pets you can literally communicate to in your native language.

The last two years of my research combining what was learned in the links listed above has proven that pigeons can not only demonstrably learn to understand spoken language, but are smart and socially conscious enough to learn to comprehend the concept of consent and to give or deny it to a basic degree of genuinely informed.

The last difference between Parrots and Pigeons is that Pigeons are fully, genuinely Domsticated, where as Parrots are only Tamed.

There is a HUGE difference between Tame and Domesticated. 

A “Tamed” animal is an individual acclimated to human contact.

There is no physiological difference between a captive bred parrot and a wild caught one.

Because the larger Psitticine species can live into their 60s or 80s and take so long to reach sexual maturity, the slow passing of their generations and the relatively brief time they have been bred for the pet market means that we literally have not had the time to make any really big strides towards genuinely domesticating them.

The smaller species like Tiels and Budgies and parrotlets have made more progress in that direction because of their shorter life spans, faster maturations, and smaller, more manageable size, but they are still nowhere NEAR truly domesticated, like chickens, Pigeons, and ducks are.

“Domesticated” specifies a living thing bred specifically to be adapted to human care. 

There are, by definition, drastic physiological differences between a domesticated animal and its wild ancestor: to the extent that most domestic animals are considered to have become a separate species from their wild ancestor.

For example, no matter how many different breeds of dog you start with or how many generations you allow them to breed, no dog mated to any other dog will ever throw a Wolf puppy.

The process of domestication works through the directed loss of traits.

Neotenous features develop through breeding for the animal to keep the fearless curiosity of a baby: To fail to develop the caution a wild animal would need to avoid predation or conflict. Because the human care taker will be protecting them from those, removing the need for the animal to develop them and making it easier to form a trusting bond with the human care taker.

Confinement tolerance develops through lack of available space. Most individual humans simply do not have enough territory to match the natural range of most animals we have domesticated. Those that survived the stress of confinement to reproduce in that drastically smaller territory lose the stamina they need to make the long journeys their wild ancestors needed to keep fed.

Change in the size of territory changes the fuel requirements of the animal being domesticated. And humans have a limited variety of food available compared to what the animal’s native environment provides. Between those two things, a domesticated animal’s digestive system changes slightly with each generation until it adapts to get its altered fuel needs met out of the available variety of food.

The completely domesticated animal is fearlessly trusting of humans, no longer balloons into obesity in drastically confined space compared to what the wild ancestor would maintain, and does not suffer the malnutrition their wild ancestors would on their modified diet.

Some species are more easily domesticated than others.

Stress, confinement, temperature, humidity, and dietary changes too drastically different from those natural to an animal will kill the captive population before they have a chance to breed.

Dogs were a very natural fit with early humans. We were both nomadic pack hunters with high stamina over long distances.

When we settled into stationary settlements and started growing food, it was mostly grain, which is the natural diet of chickens, pigeons, and rodents.

Rodents and birds attracted cats, and making cats welcome preserved our food stores.

Chickens keep pretty small territories, relative to other bird species, they are non-migratory opportunistic breeders, and they nest on the ground near the food source that they naturally share with us. Their naturally smaller territories meant they were not likely to wander very far from safe nesting grounds, and they bred as long as food was available. So all we had to do to domesticate them was keep food constantly available make them well protected nesting places so that they would breed more rapidly and a smaller plot of land could support a larger flock.

Pigeons ancestors, the rock dove, primarily eat grain, live in extended family groups that forage cooperatively as far outside their territory as necessary to keep fed, and return reliably to a specific family nesting site: Exactly like humans, once we started living in stationary settlements.

Once Humans settled into stationary dwellings, Rock Doves fit as comfortably with us as dogs, and their short maturation period and high reproductive pace made them EASY to adapt that very little bit more they needed to be a more perfect fit.

We have been domesticating pigeons, a species whose needs already fit comfortably with our own, since humans stopped being nomadic and started our first settlements.

We have had a long, LONG time to work with pigeons.

WAY longer than we have had with parrots;

Started on what amounts to domestication Easy Mode.

Of the two, the pigeons are absurdly easier to care for, bond with, and train than Parrots.

[briefpersonawombat]

A Guide on Electrical Muscle Stimulation

Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) has always been a little confusing to performance coaches and sports medicine professionals because the research is cloudy at best. Many of the reasons behind the limitations of science are the ethical boundaries you need to navigate, and the expectations you have with the results of those studies. I recently spent more time working with EMS, as more and more athletes are using EMS devices on their own and we are dealing with the hangover of injuries still lingering in the off-season. What I have learned is that the science is not perfect and there are no best practices.

There has been a resurgence in EMS in sport over the last five years because of Bill Knowles, Derek Hansen, and Henk Kraaijenhof sharing their experiences with athletes. I believe that EMS suit inluding electrostimulation vest has a place in sports performance and the rehabilitation of athletes, but we don’t have a solid explanation of why some athletes don’t respond to it while others seem to come alive from it. In this first piece, I will review some of the current literature on EMS and present a healthy perspective on this modality. (Part 2 will be published as “The Top 6 EMS Protocols for Sports Performance.”)

A Brief History of Electrical Muscle Stimulation in Modern Sport

Without getting into any unnecessary background on electrotherapy (such as a retelling of the way the ancient civilizations used electric fish or citing references to Volta and Galvani), it’s valuable to know how e-stim or EMS has been part of sport in the last few decades. Outside of product design, very little innovation has occurred since the 1950s, making EMS more of an art than a science. Coaches and therapists are sometimes frustrated because transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, or TENS for short, gets confused with sports electrostimulation.

To understand the difference between TENS and EMS, you need to know just a little bit about engineering and biology. TENS targets the sensory nerves, while EMS attacks the motor nerve and attempts to recruit as many muscle fibers as possible. TENS is currently used—mainly in vain, in my opinion—to manage pain. In 1965, Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall proposed the “gate control theory” of pain. What we know about the pain experience is extremely complex and personal, making the TENS intervention for sport very dated and extremely limited for athletes. Some research has shown positive findings, but the modality method of working with athletes in pain is lazy and proven unproductive in clinical research.

EMS focuses mainly on sending current to muscle groups in the hope of eliciting either a recovery response or a performance response later. Based on the current literature, recovery indices appear very limited, and performance benefits have shown up enough with some populations—including athletes—to be accepted as valid complementary treatments. The truth is that our understanding of electrostimulation is usually confined to a few studies on stroke victims and post-surgical wasting, and nothing I have seen has excited me.

What interests me, instead, are the clinicians who have used EMS creatively. Some of the studies on cellular and performance outcomes are strong enough to show that EMS isn’t just a placebo. I have used the Compex systems for nearly 20 years, and have some experience with the Marc Pro, PowerDot, Globus, and ARPwave. If I had to conclude which I think works best, it will be a short answer: All of them work, so choose one based on your needs and not its features.

If you were to go to a medical bookstore and check the physical therapy section on EMS, you would see that it tends to be a set of protocols based on pad placement, current settings, and scheduling sessions. This approach is nowhere near the same as what the modern clinician does and, since we are now entering the bionic athlete era with gait retraining, this only widens the gap between practice and research. It’s easy to shout that you’re ahead of the research, but without evidence, much of what clinicians do becomes like the dated RICE protocol that we still see people clinging to.

A Rapid Review of Electricity for Coaches and Therapists

Electric current can flow in different ways, such as through a wire, or something lesser known, such as a plasma state. The current generated from a muscle electrostimulator uses a conductive pad to transfer through the skin, causing the muscle to contract. The specifics of the muscle contraction will come later, but the important information is that electricity from medical muscle stimulators is more complicated than voltage and ampere. Electricity is not just about whether something is “on” or “off,” and we often take much of the technology we use for granted, especially the safety of the muscle stimulators. Most companies that get involved with e-stim devices are regulated, but it’s up to the consumer to do their homework on the quality of the product.

Experienced coaches and therapists commonly refer to stimulation parameters and share their practices, including the use of different types of settings, such as Russian Stimulation or strength protocols. Stimulation parameters and waveforms can be the subject of their own article but, for the most part, duty cycle, frequency, intensity, and ramp details are part of electrotherapy theory, but are not very well-documented. Regardless of the intimate details, many parallels exist between classic training principles and the current clinical practices of EMS use. Cycles, or waves of energy, are part of a “unified training theory” proposed by several coaches and sport scientists. EMS should be used to improve athletes, similarly to loading the body with training or rehabilitation.

Companies must do their job, not only to prove their machines are delivering exactly what they promise, but also to ensure that their products are used as intended. Most companies have terrible product education, and visiting their YouTube channels makes me cringe more than their highest simulator settings.

The Science of Electrical Contractions With Muscle

Sending electricity through a muscle group sounds like a bad science fiction movie, but that’s precisely what athletes are willing to do to get or feel better. It’s a priority to know what EMS can do physiologically and what is likely ineffective. Five years ago, pioneering researcher Nicola Maffiuletti summarized the differences between a normal muscular contraction and one from electrical stimulation in his NSCA journal article. The two types of contractions have similarities and differences that a coach should know. Overall, EMS is not going to make a major difference. However, like all things in sports training, the little things matter.

One development that throws this concept out the window is the rise in functional electrical muscle stimulation, equipped with electrostimulation shorts, which incorporates active training with the simultaneous overlay of EMS. While we can assume that the merging of both contractions will yield a hybrid result, most of the research is with disease models and only clinical rehabilitation has shown merit with this in early post-operation subjects. I have yet to see a single study with elite athletes performing EMS in conjunction with conventional training, but the case reports and work with spinal cord injury patients is promising.

Finally, EMS is used to help with neuromuscular adaptations and, while sessions may prevent atrophy, the improvements are from neural drive-like mechanisms, not from increased protein synthesis rates. EMS doesn’t directly create hypertrophy changes to the muscle, and a study on nutrition and e-stim showed no acute changes.

What is also important to know is that electrically stimulated muscles are, for the most part, superficial, and that is useful for propulsive muscle groups. Some rogue therapists are using fine needle EMS with low current for deeper muscle penetration for rehabilitation purposes. Most EMS experiences are one muscle at a time, but some athletes are getting simultaneous total body sessions. Nobody knows if total bodywork is more time-efficient or if a possible synergistic benefit exists, but down the road, studies will likely discover if there is a value beyond convenience.

The Scientific Benefits of Stimulating the Neuromuscular System

If you were to read a catalog of features and settings for a personal e-stim device, the list would be very long, ranging from relaxation massage all the way to explosive strength. While, technically, different settings will have unique stimulation protocols from the device programming in the electrostimulation center, the reality is that only three purposes exist with EMS and the research is enough to form a realistic expectation. The three EMS benefits are strength training, rehabilitation, and a little regeneration. Distilling the benefits more, you can make an argument that EMS helps with general muscle strength and facilitates low-level recovery for travel. That’s about it, but it’s enough to warrant investing in it, especially when sport moves into the unfortunate health compromise for winning.

Sports Performance

EMS and strength, and the results that may lead to jump and sprint performance, are mixed in the research. However, enough research shows that if EMS is done with specific protocols, a positive result is possible, especially with the less-trained athlete. So far, much of the work has been done with soccer, and some recent investigations of youth jumping performance and plyometrics had favorable outcomes.