CUTES

There is no research done on this to be able to definitively give an answer. I've written about this before, as well, but I'm feeling chatty.

However, according to anecdotal evidence by keepers around the world, after being hand raised male peafowl treat humans the same way as they would treat a rival peacock they hold a grudge against, and the aggression is almost always worse during mating season (exception cases where it's bad all year). This would seem to indicate that instead of seeing themselves as humans, peacocks see humans as "like them" ie: peacocks, and that the aggression is hormone based.

With peafowl, a male will attempt to chase off unrelated rival males. Related males form leks, but even males that have not ever met before seem to be able to clock blood relations (this actually was confirmed in scientific study, which I have talked about before so you can find it in the peafowl tag somewhere), and whatever method they use to do this, it cannot apply to humans (because you're definitely not able to be blood related to them). As such, the solution is only EVER going to be: chase off. But, humans are not going to be chased off by a bird they are keeping in a pen, and so begins a feedback loop of stress and aggression: they try to chase you off, they can't, they get frustrated and stressed and more desperate, rinse and repeat. This eventually, even with no reinforcement from you, leads them to be stressed even just seeing you, whether or not you're interacting.

However, most people I've seen aren't just "not doing anything," they are actively reinforcing the idea that they are a threat to the bird. They yell, they make sudden movements, they kick them, they pin them to the ground, they chase them around/carry them around, they spray them with hoses, they attack them with sticks/rakes/pool noodles... I have seen the gamut. And ALL of it reinforces the idea, to the peacock, that they are DANGEROUS and should be CHASED OFF. The bird physically cannot escape in many of these situations (being penned in a flight pen), so the only option they would see is fighting.

This is ALL solved by just... not hand raising them. When they don't consider you to be a rival cock, then 99.9999% of them will be chill dudes even during mating season. They don't actually LIKE to fight, but there are certain situations which inform their instincts (instincts strengthened greatly by hormones) that they need to in order to survive/reproduce.

It’s basically the exact same issue, the animal is hand raised and thinks humans are also a llama/alpaca. It’s more of an issue in males because intact males can be very territorial and establish pecking order via neck wrestling and biting. I think you can probably see the issue in having a 400 lb animal attempt to neck wrestle with you.

My family actually has a female who was somewhat hand raised (she was premature and required tube feeding and extensive care) and we are careful with our training of her. She has grown up to be extremely friendly and affectionate, but she absolutely struggles with boundaries. We have to be far more strict with her in terms of her behavior when haltered. I wouldn’t call her an ABS alpaca, however she’s definitely at risk of becoming one.

Males with ABS are commonly castrated to try and reduce some of the territorial behavior, but there’s little that can be done and it’s effectively “incurable”.

And "hand raised" is not the same as human raised, for birds at least. Incubator chicks that don't imprint or aren't interacted with heavily don't get aggressive. It's the people that imprint them or handle them excessively and cuddle them a lot from a very early age, particularly if they continue to do it to maturity. It's the difference between hand feeding and bonding with a bird as a parent figure and the rearing wildlife rehabbers do to allow birds to go back to the wild... The former is what a lot of people do, because in many other fowl it makes a friendlier bird. It's just that generalizing this to peafowl will land you in hot water, which is why it's important for anyone wanting to get a new animal, even (or perhaps particularly) if it's similar to one they've kept before.

Because for peas, once they're imprinted/hand raised, there's no going back. You can't fix it by keeping it business only. It doesn't get better. But you CAN raise them in brooders with minimal interaction and be just fine. Food, water, bedding changes, and <30 minutes of interaction time a day is usually a good method, and ALWAYS raise multiple chicks together (even if you have to sub in a chicken for a solo hatch) so you're not the only creature it interacts with.

Chicken hens WILL squat for peacocks though, so I suspect that in the "mate or rival" categories, the hens that raise them would fall into "mate" categories rather than rivals, and I don't know if anyone risks the peacocks by hatching them where roosters can get them. Considering I have seen instances where chicken roosters kill peachicks it's not advisable at all.

The request is so urgent my boss needs it by the end of the work week. Which, y'know, is 5 PM on a Friday. So I have four hours to do it.

It's a forwarded request. Somebody contacted a member of the donation team asking for help, "I need a map from the Vietnam War to use for a presentation." It's somebody she's trying to coax into giving a five figure donation to the museum.

The request was asked to the donation team member, who then emailed my boss, who then emailed and called me urgently.

This map required:

North and South Vietnam in it

All four areas that South Vietnam was divided into for military purposes ('Corps') clearly delineated

Four cities, all of them horrifically misspelled, and only identifiable because I know what battle the requester is asking about (it’s in III Corps on the border with Cambodia) (the requester danced around the battle but I’m knowledgeable enough to identify it)

Has Laos and Cambodia in it

Has the Ho Chi Minh Trail in it

So. I was mad about the 'you have literally four hours to find a map with a lot of requirements.'

I was then mad at myself about finding a copyright free map from Texas Tech University within half an hour, proving her right for asking me to do it.

Then, after I found a map that perfectly met the requirements, I was equally amazed, baffled, and horrified when I read further into the forwarded email chain.

The donation team team member they were speaking to used AI to generate a map.

The above put half of North Vietnam in South Vietnam, made the Ho Chi Minh Trail a country, made 60% of Cambodia part of South Vietnam, put the DMZ extremely high up in North Vietnam, completely disconnected the southern tip of Vietnam, misplaced all of the Corps zones, etc etc

At the very last second the donation team member had a moment of divine clarity, remembering there's three historians on payroll to ask for this kind of thing from. So she contacted my boss while saying, "I had fun with this, but I decided I should check for accuracy before I send it to the donor! I need a fact check by the end of the day, then I send it"

My boss, while not the most knowledgeable on the Vietnam War, does know her geography. She took one look, and knew it was so off she called me to tell me how urgent it is that I look at the email and respond

I would never pay money for a redbox. if you ask politely and are very very persistent (i.e. annoying) they will let you take it away

here's my dad and i taking it away

luckily there are no shortage of freaks like us who will just take them away on our own volition. we did it all "by the book", too: we set up cones and caution tape, disconnected electricity properly, used an angle grinder to grind down the bolts in the concrete so nobody would trip on them, then cleaned everything up afterward and sealed off the electrical panel so the store would know everything is safe and tidy. though they were hesitant when we were first contacting them, they were honestly very relieved and grateful when we finally took it away, especially once they saw that we "knew what we were doing" (we don't) and look like we've "done this before" (we haven't).

the fun part: the reason why this redbox, in particular, was completely full and unraided is because the computer hardware inside had failed some months before the bankruptcy, and a failing company sure as hell wasn't gonna send a tech out to our podunk dipshit city to fix it, so it was impossible to rent movies or take any discs out. plus, for who knows how long, people were returning old redbox discs to this machine and not taking any out, leading to a much higher variety of movies than your average redbox.

there is a thriving community of redbox hackers and modders out there, as well, creating open-source software for repurposing the machines and not letting their very interesting and robust disc-management hardware go to waste. this one belongs to my brother (who was very annoying persistent and did all the legwork of contacting managers and securing permission) who is a programmer by trade and will be hacking it into a family-access movie library, with whatever discs we want. i mean the machine is completely weatherproof and has a built-in AC unit, it would be such a waste to not try to turn it into something cool.

if we get another one, i'm gonna try to mod it into some sort of art or zine vending machine. the disc boxes are just the right size for small print art or stickers. would make a great "little free library" too.

Paying the bill

the campaign was really hard, so you didn't want to waste resources building this thing, but if you didn't build it and you cleared the mission the game would give you the lowest ranking because you didn't gain the advantage. even worse, every time you LOST a mission without building one, you would be forced to replay a tutorial on how to build the command unit

grace lands on calling rocky "he" because he has a split second of panic in one of their first interactions and thinks "uhhh he or she or oh gosh this species might have a dozen sexes and use pronouns I don't even have words for um uh okay I'll just use 'he' because using 'it' for a sapient creature feels wrong. why does no one talk about how to use pronouns in first contact." personally I find this hilarious because it characterizes grace as being just about Gender Aware enough to conceive of and be cool with the idea of sex and gender existing outside of the socially constructed binary and is probably even down to use neopronouns for people, but also a) he still opts for "he" over "they" and b) is completely unaware that zillions of people are absolutely having fifth dimensional discussions about pronouns and first contact.

grace never refers to adrian by pronouns.

grace thinks of adrian as rocky's spouse specifically, not husband or wife.

there's a tiny bit at the end where grace says if he shined a light out of the clear xenonite of his dome then he could "see an eridian going about his business," meaning he's probably just using "he" as the pronoun for all eridians.