Redditor Unknowingly Teaches Their Pet Birds To Dance, Forces Family To Dance For The Amus**ent Of The Birds Too

In a world filled with chirps and melodies, one owner’s bond with their four cockatiels reveals a touching dance of mimicry and affection. Among them, Coco, the beloved male, learns to echo words and sounds with innocent charm, transforming simple phrases into heartfelt conversations that bridge the gap between human and bird.

Yet, this playful connection comes with its own symphony of demands—when the dance stops, so does their patience, erupting into shrieks that fill the air with urgent longing. It’s a raw reminder that love, even in its smallest, feathered forms, requires attention and understanding beyond words.

AITA for forcing my family to dance for the amusement of my birds?

As noted by animal behaviorists like Dr. Susan Friedman, a specialist in applied behavior analysis for animals, animal behavior is heavily shaped by consequences. In this case, the birds have established a powerful positive reinforcement schedule: screaming (an aversive behavior to humans) is immediately terminated by dancing (a desired behavior for the birds). This creates an intermittent, highly effective schedule of reinforcement, often termed an ‘extinction burst’ risk if the behavior is not immediately rewarded.

The OP is essentially trapped by the effectiveness of their own training and subsequent reinforcement. The initial training (teaching face-smacking and dancing) established a desirable trick, but when the other male copied, the operant conditioning seems to have shifted: the birds now demand the performance, using shrieking as a form of operant aggression or demand behavior. The motivation for the birds is clear: they are maximizing attention and activity. For the OP and family, the motivation is purely negative reinforcement—stopping the screaming noise.

From a professional standpoint, the OP’s actions in seeking compliance from the family are understandable given the noise control issue, but the long-term solution requires a systematic behavior modification plan for the birds, not just forcing family members to comply. The OP needs to implement extinction procedures, meaning they must tolerate the initial, likely increased, screaming when they stop rewarding the demand behavior. A constructive recommendation is to gradually fade the intensity of the ‘dance’ reward, replacing the full performance with a much smaller, less demanding action (like a quick head nod) until the birds return to baseline, or to seek professional avian behavioral consultation to address the learned demand shrieking.

THE COMMENTS SECTION WENT WILD – REDDIT HAD *A LOT* TO SAY ABOUT THIS ONE.

But I would NEVER visit your house again.

The original poster is in a difficult situation where their beloved, highly trained pet birds have learned a learned behavior—screaming until they are entertained—that imposes significant demands on the household. The central conflict is the OP’s affection for their pets versus the obligation this affection creates for the family members who must now perform for the birds to maintain peace.

Given that the learned behavior results in disruptive noise that only stops with specific human action, should the OP accept that caring for these highly trained birds requires mandatory, scheduled family participation in the performance, or is it reasonable for the family to demand the OP modify the birds’ behavior, even if it means losing the unique trained tricks?