"If the captive-breeding programme succeeded in its mission of raising birds that didn’t depend on humans for food, shelter, or any other basic necessity of condor life, it failed in other ways. The zoo-bred birds refused to adopt the manners we demand of wild animals. They weren’t scared of humans; they weren’t even willing to politely ignore us. Rather, they seemed fascinated by us. Critics of the condor-reintroduction programme – including Reid – were quick to point fingers. The blame, they said, lay with the birds’ shoddy parenting. The condor’s wild essence had not been passed down to this new generation, and now it was gone forever. For, you see, these birds had never met their biological parents. Instead, they were raised by puppets." - John (bird whisperer)

"Condor parenting is ‘not super cuddly’, Utt told me, and a big part of learning to perform the role of adult condor was to stop being so gentle with the zoo-hatched chicks. In the wild, if a chick gets too clingy or does something else its parents deem not-condor-appropriate, it will get a smack. Later on, parents will sometimes push chicks off ledges to teach them to fly. Learning to mimic this wild behaviour was no doubt challenging for the keepers, especially when every condor chick born in the zoos seemed like a tiny, fragile miracle. But roughing up the chicks early in life, Utt said, ‘seems to actually produce birds that behave more like wild birds’. What’s more, these condors will now know how they are supposed to treat their own offspring when the time comes. There’s still only so much a hand puppet can do, however, and the condor keepers realised they needed to bring in reinforcements. The chicks’ pens now have windows through which the chicks can see real, live adult condors. Hopefully, Mace says, that gives them a sense of identity, an idea of what they are going to be when they grow up. (Something similar is done with whooping cranes at Patuxent.) At around five months, the chicks are moved to live with an older ‘mentor’ condor. These mentors teach their charges how to live with other birds and respect the condor hierarchy. And now, condors do sometimes see humans in the zoo: the growing birds are occasionally ambushed and tackled by zookeepers, to train them to be afraid of people." - John (bird whisperer)

" the growing birds are occasionally ambushed and tackled by zookeepers, to train them to be afraid of people." And all I can picture is someone yelling out, "Tickle monster!" and then a Calvin and Hobbes rough and tumble. - bentley

It's amusing to imagine. :-) - John (bird whisperer)