Does your parrot favor one foot to another?

Our African Grey Jerry always needs to be picked up on his left side. Whenever you pick him on the right side he will not step up. Also, when he eats it is always using his left foot. As a matter of fact, when Jerry plays with his foot toys or even his regular bird toys they are always in his left foot.

Our Double Headed Amazon Kiwi also has peculiar tendencies with his footwork. For the most part he eats with is left foot and plays with foot toys with his left foot.

All this is interesting because in the article below when a parrot tends to favor one foot over another the more intelligent the bird is.

The article states that “Parrots with a very strong bias one way or the other tended to be more intelligent and were better able to perform more complex tasks than those that were intermixed”

Also in the article it mentions, “There is a strong connection between preferences for foot use and the hemisphere the parrots are using to analyze information. By strongly favoring one foot over the other, a parrot shows us it is processing specific information in one hemisphere of its brain without interference from the other hemisphere, much like a dual processor computer.”

I know how smart parrots are based on own flock of 5 parrots. This article couldn't be more true. I always thought my feathered flock was smart but this article solidified it.

It's all in the footwork: New research sheds light on parrot intelligence from Phys.org