Source checked 12 November 2026. PawLine editorial team. Not professionally reviewed.
Research-reading information, not veterinary advice or an individual prognosis. No countdown or remaining-years estimate. A present health concern needs an appropriate avian professional; do not wait for a worksheet or an app reply.
A zoo sample is not every companion bird
Both cited studies used records from zoological institutions. That gives researchers large datasets, but it does not make those birds a random sample of present-day pets in private homes. The reason for a number's inclusion matters as much as the apparent precision of its decimal places.
Living ages are not completed lifespans
The historical study separately examined the ages of birds still alive at its cutoff. Those birds had not yet completed their lives. A current age and an age at death answer different questions. The paper's discussion makes that distinction explicit; a summary should preserve it.
An adult subset changes the question
Young and colleagues also analyzed birds that survived to at least four years, to reduce the influence of juvenile mortality across their species set. That was a research definition, not a universal age of adulthood or a care milestone. Do not silently compare that subset with a statistic covering other ages.
Wild and captive are not synonyms
The historical paper discusses limits in generalizing from captive records to wild populations. Predation, conditions and the histories represented can differ. This page provides no conversion factor between zoo, wild and household life, and no ranking of which setting guarantees a longer life.
Sources and limits
Young et al.: Survival on the ark, Animal Conservation (2012)
Smeele et al.: Coevolution of relative brain size and life expectancy in parrots (2022)