Photo: Lincolnshire Wildlife Centre
5 parrots living in a wildlife park in the United Kingdom have been taken from public display after they were found to be engaged in a high level of swearing, and even teaching other birds how to swear themselves.
The African grey parrots named Billy, Elsie, Eric, Jade, and Tyson arrived at the Lincolnshire Wildlife Park in August and were soon heard shouting obscenities.
CEO of the wildlife park, Steve Nichols, told the Evening Express of the naughty birds:
"We saw it very quickly; we are quite used to parrots swearing but we've never had five at the same time. Most parrots clam up outside, but for some reason these five relish it. Literally within 20 minutes of being in the introductory we were told that they had sworn at a customer and for the next group of people, all sorts of obscenities came out."
"We took in five in the same week and because they were all quarantined together, it meant that one room was just full of swearing birds. The more they swear the more you usually laugh which then triggers them to swear again. But when you get four or five together that have learned the swearing and naturally learnt the laughing, so when one swears, one laughs and before you know it, it just got to be like an old working men's club scenario where they are all just swearing and laughing."
The worry is that if the parrots are not stopped, they will teach the other 1,500 birds that live at the park to also swear, leading to a mass of never ending profanity. The CEO does, however, say that most visitors and staff find the parrots very funny and that no one has yet complained:
"People have come to us, they think it's highly amusing, we haven't had one complaint. When a parrot tells you to f*ck off it amuses people very highly … It's brought a big smile to a really hard year."
The parrots have now been taken to separate areas of the park where it is hoped they will not be so influential on the other more innocent birds.
Swearing in birds is not uncommon and has been witnessed in a wide array of species. It is unclear as to whether the birds know what they are saying, but what they do know is that humans give them a reaction and attention when they do say those words.
A YouTube video uploaded in 2018 has over 30 minutes of footage of swearing birds and has clocked up more than 1.7 million views. Be warned, the language is very bad!
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