Congenital Deafness?

[Teddscau]

Several years ago I adopted a budgie who had been rescued from an animal hoarder. Alice appeared to have PTSD, and she didn't interact properly with other budgies. For the first couple of years I had her, she would only interact with Ziggy, a male who I adopted around the same time as her. When other budgies talked to her, she wouldn't look at them.

She rarely vocalized, and from what I remember, when she did vocalize, it was usually just screaming in sudden panic, or when she'd do this weird, extremely deep "laugh". I don't actually remember her doing any sort of budgie chatter. Often, she seemed to be in her own little world. For the first few months, my other budgies actually seemed "creeped out" by her because of how abnormal her behaviour was.

I've had 33 birds over the years, and I can definitely say there was something not right about her. I actually often referred to her as my "autistic budgie" because of how, well, autistic she was with her behaviour. Like, she wouldn't look at the others' faces even.

Today I was thinking about her again, and a thought occurred that she might've been born deaf. I know birds who were born with hearing can only go deaf temporarily since they have the ability to regrow those little ear hairs that allow them to heal, but is it possible for something to go wrong while they're developing in the egg, resulting in them being incapable of ever hearing? On a side note, when the vet performed her necropsy, she was missing her ovary. Since the testicles of most birds are the same size as the ovary, he should've seen two testicles if she were a male.

 

[Laurasea]

Very interesting. She may have been inbred , and had some congenital defects. Im glad yiu were able to give a better life.

My Lutino quaker Pikachu has blue eyes, and feel he is hearing impaired. Like he hears but muffled. He us unusually quiet for a quaker , doesn't respond to noise like the rest if the flock. When he copies speech its very garbled and murmur. That could just be his way if " speaking " but it feels like that's what he hears....

I'm sorry Alice had such awful trauma, tgey are so intelligent and deserve so much more from us.

At least there are people like you. And people on this forum, working to educate, and improve the lives of these special and incredible creatures.

 

[Teddscau]

When I heard the necropsy results, I thought she might've had something akin to Swyer syndrome. She looked and behaved like a female, but she apparently didn't have any gonads. With Swyer syndrome, the gonads are all but absent, appearing as completely undeveloped bits of tissue known as "streak gonads". If the streak gonads aren't removed, there's a significant chance of them turning cancerous, even in juveniles. When she developed her so-called "kidney tumour", it happened incredibly fast, despite being on dandelion root extract.

All my small birds are given dandelion root extract in their water to prevent/treat cancer ever since Ju developed testicular cancer back in 2015 (I think it was 2015?). Ju, Lara, Alice, and Birdie all have/had cancer, but all of them have had their tumours shrink/disappear, all except for Alice who died from blood loss from a tumour the size of her head. Such aggressive, fast growing tumours are most often associated with cancer of the ovaries or testicles, especially in intersex individuals.

 

[Scott]

I suppose congenital hearing defects are possible. Definitely not a good adaptive behavior for wild birds, they would not likely live long enough to pass on such genes.