Can Birds Eat Avocado?

As wonderfully healthy as the avocado is for us humans, birds should never be fed any part of the avocado tree, including its fruit. Birds are extremely sensitive to a toxin in avocado called persin, and eating it can result in sickness and death.

Persin is a fungicide produced in the leaves and bark of the avocado tree, and in the pit and the skin of the fruit. It leaches into the flesh of the fruit, and therefore birds should never eat any part of an avocado, including the flesh.

Persin is toxic to many different types of animals, including cats and dogs, but birds are particularly sensitive and vulnerable to it.

In birds, the symptoms are abnormal heart rate, difficulty breathing and asphyxia, tissue damage, weakness, and disorientation. High doses can cause respiratory failure and death for birds within 12 hours of consumption.

This information should make it perfectly clear that if you own a pet bird, you should never let it eat any part of an avocado. It’s amazing to me that I owned a bird for many years and I never even had this knowledge until recently. Obviously, never feed leftover avocado to wild birds, either.

Photo: Organic avocado by whologwhy

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