I think you would be hard pressed to find any population of domesticated animals that are genetically 100% true to wild type. Aside from places like zoos and few breeders that introduce wild genes whenever they can get them.
Just the act of keeping them for generation after generation after generation in captivity selects out the genetics that allows the bird or animal to exist in cages without dying of stress and to adapt to having their movement, behaviours and diet significantly changed.
We all know that individual animals can be trained to exist in close contact with humans. A young owl fed by hand, imprinting on its handlers, may grow up to treat them like family. But that owl's offspring, at birth, will be just as wild as its ancestors.
Domestication, by contrast, is not a quality trained into an individual, but one bred into an entire population through generations of living in proximity to humans. Many if not most of the species' wild instincts have long since been lost. Domestication, in other words, is mostly in the genes.
The famous Russian experiment with foxes is a dramatic example of what happens to animals genetically when they are especially bred to be friendly, less stressed around humans and easier to handle.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/gue ... estication/
As the husbandry for keeping birds has improved dramatically, more and more generations can be bred without the addition of wild genes, so who knows where it will end up.
In the show dog world Breed societies and their judges have a lot to answer for – rewarding poor breeding, ignoring mutations are that clearly unhealthy and distressing for the dog. It is happening in the horse show world as well unfortunately.
Maybe I’m having a misanthrope’s day, but with 70% of the world population headed for urbanization, most humans will have no idea what a wild type looks like and probably more than likely not care.
