It's not the force of the bite, although it does hurt (they bite through wood after all). It's the humiliation from having one of the most fragile, easy to kill pets decide that it can express its displeasure by biting your hand.
Damn little meat potato. The only reason you can even bite me is because you're so damn fragile I can't risk dropping you. Also, the reason I'm holding you is to trim your nails because you don't wear them down naturally since you live your entire life on padded flannel blankets. Where do you even get off having displeasure to express?
If you weren't so damn cute, you'd be on the grill.
I've had a guinea pig and he never bit me. Not once. Only licked. He trusted me and I made sure he had a good life. He was outside and free to roam the garden until dusk. And inside the home if the outside was too cold/dark/wet. The garden also offered lots of plants to eat and hide under. He had great avriety in diet alongside the petfood and guineapig essentials. He would join me at the dinner table with his own plate of safe greens. We would snuggle every day. Everytime I had to catch him, it sometimes turned into a chase. He ofcourse didn't want to go into the cage. The cage only served to protect him against predators at night, and from our electronic cables. Which ofcourse he didn't understand. But he still accepted me picking him up when catching him. No biting. He knew he'd be free again come morning. He died how he lived after my dad let him out and left him outside overnight because he couldn't catch him. My only regret is that I didn't know they had to come in pairs.
So what in the fuck are you doing with that guinea pig that it distrusts you so? I literally had to chase him sometimes and he still didn't bite me when I gently but quickly scooped him.
Well, if you had more than one, you'd find that they are all different, with different personalities, and you wouldn't be so quick to assume you know all guinea pigs because of your experience with your sole pig.
Crazy parrot and reptile lady here to confirm. I would much rather take a bite from a large snake any day of the week than take a bite from one of my birds. I've had to get stitches multiple times because of my little feathered assholes.
I have been bit by a conure more times than I can count, I have been bit and constricted by a python once. Getting bit by an actual parrot is a big reason why I haven't gotten into larger birds.
I would rather be bit by the Amazonian Hitler pigeon. Python teeth are like Velcro for skin and it is horrible.
The key to dealing with a (pet) snake bite is to not pull back in fear. Their teeth are definitely like Velcro. Usually I'd just let them go to town and then run some hot tap water over their head. They don't like the water and immediately let go. With birds you're getting hurt no matter what you do.
This is scary new information for me that puts a childhood incident in a much more horrifying context. I was at pet store when I was like 10 and one of the parrots seemed friendly so I let it climb up to my shoulder, only for it to painfully bite my ear. It hurt a lot, but no blood was drawn. I managed to get free easily enough. I thought that was pretty bad, but now I'm learning that apparently it could've easily ripped off my ear?!? Apparently I'm a lot luckier and that parrot was actually a lot nicer than I thought.
My African Grey could easily cause me serious damage but he does hold back by only giving me warning bites. He thinks he's being gentle but it still hurts and I don't ever forget what they are capable of.
No not where I live. When my husband and I kept hot inverts along with our snakes I kept a comprehensive supplemental insurance just in case someone got hurt, but the laws here only apply for reporting illegal animals.
I've had a lot of reptiles and as a result, a lot of reptile bites.
Almost every time I've been bit it was an accident or a response, and as soon as the reptile realized it had human skin in it's mouth it would release. Even herbivore iguanas have a lot of pretty sharp teeth and I've had some unique looking bite marks, but they almost never bite intentionally.
Parrots meanwhile... they are evil incarnate, at least to me. I've never met a parrot that didn't bite me hard enough to let me know it could easily amputate parts of my body if it so chose. Meanwhile I see them loving and cuddling other people, people who say things like "He's really very loving, he never bites anyone, he's perfectly safe to pet!"
"Most people", no, the earth isn't mostly Americans. It's only Americans that do this dumb as fuck things where they forget the rest of the world and think only they exist or matter. You have no idea how fucking annoying it is, and how much it shows stupidity and ignorance.
I have been bitten by a cat that meant it and a dog that meant it. I would rather be bitten by a dog. The cat hit bone. The dog did not. The hamster bite bled profusely, but otherwise wasn't too bad. Based on the information in this comic, I am going to avoid birds.
The cat was my pet probably 20 years ago. He jumped on the table and landed on a plate of barbecue sauce, so I had the bright idea to try to give him a bath to wash it off. He didn't like baths.
The dog was probably 37 years ago. I was around 13 or 14. The dog was attacking a neighbor kid who was about 6 years old, so I was intervening to save the kid. The kid got away and my yelling attracted the dog's owner's attention. Not until after I got bit. It was some kind of German Shepard mix. My parents and the parents of the six year old reported him to the police, but nothing really happened. I think the owner was a cop.
I hated that dog. He was usually on the other side of a big fence and would bark super aggressively whenever anyone was near. When I intervened he had the kid's head in his mouth. I kicked him in the ribcage as hard as I could, and he turned on me.
I got stitches from both incidents. Four for the cat bite and I think 12 from the dog. Cat was on the hand near the base of my thumb. The dog was on my right forearm.
No stitches for the hamster, he was a pet, but not very domesticated- probably because we had cats in the house too. I was probably about 8.
The thing about dogs is that they don't damage you by puncturing. They try to grab onto your body parts and tear your flesh out by moving their head furiously. In that regard PSI can be a useful metric as it describes how hard it will be to open their jaws.
See that beak? That downwards pointy thing? It's meant to crack open tough nuts. You do the math on how much hurt a sharp thing that can crack open some very tough nuts can cause
I had 2 red parrots over 30 years ago. I can't remember the species name. They used to flex the metal bars of the cage when they were bored. I had to bought heavy-duty gloves to handle them even than one of them bite me on my left pinky with the gloves and pierced the glove and my finger. Of I haven't got the gloves on I'm pretty sure it would have ripped my finger off or caused severe injury.
i have 2 blue and gold macaws, and let me tell you, not much stops that beak when it wants to get through something. walnuts, hazelnuts, brazil nuts...child's play!
i have to feed my guys 2x4s so they dont eat my house!