You may have wondered whether birds that are performing seemingly useless aerial acrobatics may in fact be enjoying themselves. Since birds cannot report (verbally) on their emotions, assigning such emotions has been notoriously difficult. Recently though, researchers started to adopt a componential view on emotions, which contains behavioural, psychological and physiological elements that can be measured in animals. Integrating these three elements, we examined whether flying generates positive affect in the galah. Specifically, we measured behaviour, cognitive bias, and faecal glucocorticoid metabolites in galahs (n=17) that actively participated in a free flight demonstration and compared measurements of days on which they did or did not fly. We found that all individuals almost always choose to fly when given the opportunity, as well as increased appetitive behaviours after flying in comparison to non-flight days. In addition, birds became more likely to respond optimistically in a cognitive bias task after consecutive days of flight, and conversely, became more likely to respond pessimistically with increasing days on which flight opportunity was withheld. Although no differences were found between faecal glucocorticosteroid concentrations on flight and non-flight days, a decrease in glucocorticosteroid concentrations could be noticed with increasing precipitation. Our results suggest that galahs are motivated to fly, and that flight positively affects their emotional state, therefore emphasizing the need for further studies into the role of affective states in initiating animal behaviour, and into free flight as a potential ethological need for birds.
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