Despite what I write in this website, my ultimate opinion is not actually that aviaries are the best places for 'pet' birds.  If one takes the argument to its limit, the best places for them would be the skies and trees of their native lands!  An aviary is just the next best option for birds that have been bred in a foreign land (to make money, usually), or worse still, illegally imported (for the same reason).  I actually don't think birds make good pets because it is much more difficult to provide them with what they need, unlike dogs, cats, horses, goldfish etc, though having said that certain pets other than birds endure terribly cramped conditions.  Hamsters in plastic balls provide one of the most extreme examples - what kind of a numbskull invented those may I ask - and what kind of a numbskull would put his pet into one???  (But see the paragraphs below about laboratory animals, who are often immobilised for the purposes of experiments - at least the hamsters can roll around).

Let's focus on birds again for a moment.  Sometimes - perhaps you have seen this too - I have watched an escaped cockatiel fly over my house - absolutely beautiful to behold as it swoops through the air like a swallow.  They can't do that even in the biggest aviary.  And they can't keep themselves clean the way they would in the wild, where their droppings would be widely dispersed and broken down by micro-organisms.  Nor can they find natural food, or nest as they would in the wild...in other words, they can't enjoy their lives as they potentially could if mankind had not interfered. 

Turning such beautiful creatures into 'pets' is one of man's many follies, just one example of man's thinking he owns everything on this planet and has the right to use it in any way he chooses  - to serve him, feed him, keep him warm, amuse him, and worst of all provide him with research tools in his search for human medicines.  This latter is the worst folly of all, because animals make completely inadequate and potentially dangerous research models for human medicines, as a variety of doctors in the United States, United Kingdom and Japan will tell you if you look at the Americans For Medical Advancement website: http://www.curedisease.com/.

The president of the AFMA is Dr Ray Greek who has written several books on why animals make ineffective research tools in the development of human medicine.  See also his regularly updated articles in 'Dr Greek's Office' on the National Anti-vivisection Society's website at: http://www.navs.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ain_sci_drgreek_main  And check out: http://www.drhadwentrust.org.uk/ and  http://www.curedisease.net/ for similar articles.  The work of the Dr Hadwen Trust in particular inspires hope that one day experimentation on animals will be a thing of the past.  The Trust provides grants to many top-class universities for the development of non-animal research methods.

Until non-animal research becomes the norm, may God help all the laboratory animals - the birds, monkeys, cats, dogs, rabbits, hamsters, gerbils, mice, rats, horses, sheep, cows, pigs, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates - who must suffer horrifically until the scientific community wakes up to the fact that animal models make for bad, inaccurate science, leading to the manufacture of low-quality, inaccurate medicines.  

There are already many alternatives to animal-based research, in various stages of development.  For example, computer modelling of drugs and drug targets has the potential to provide humans with much more effective medicines (which may be tailored to suit individual patients), and this will contribute towards making the traditional use of laboratory animals completely obsolete. Details of other non-animal methods of research that are currently being developed are set forth in the Dr Hadwen Trust website: http://www.drhadwentrust.org.uk/. 

It takes courage to break with tradition and to set examples of change.  It takes intelligence and diligence to invent accurate research tools that do not exploit lives.  It takes humility to acknowledge that every species on this planet has the right to enjoy life, not just the (supposedly) most intelligent of them.