- Talk about fowl language.
Animals can develop all kinds of behavioral problems when stuck in a zoo. They may get depressed, aggressive, or overly clingy, among other things.
One zoo in the U.K. is struggling with a unique problem, however. Its African gray parrots just won’t stop swearing.
Lincolnshire Wildlife Park has been trying to deal with its cussing parrots since 2020. Yet no matter what they’ve tried, the parrots simply won’t stop their foul-mouthed ways.
It hasn’t been all bad for the zoo, since visitors seem to love the filthy language the birds spew nonstop. Still, their behavior is not prim and proper enough for the British zoo and they need a solution.
Since all creative methods have failed, Lincolnshire Wildlife Park is now getting back to the basics — peer pressure. They plan to release the swearing but highly social parrots into a huge flock of properly behaving African grays.
The zoo hopes that the other birds’ more normal parrot-like noises will encourage the potty-mouthed ones to stop cussing.
We can’t be the only ones who see this plan backfiring massively, right?
Easy Words to Learn
In case you’re unfamiliar with the original story, though, let’s take a step back for a minute. What are these potty-mouthed parrots and where did they come from?
Well, parrots are well-known for their ability to mimic all kinds of noises. But even in this crowd, African grays are particularly brilliant.
They’re very intelligent birds that readily learn to imitate almost everything they hear. Not only that, but they’re super social as well and spread their favorite noises throughout their flock.
In 2020, Lincolnshire Wildlife Park (LWP) received five new additions to its 1,000-strong African gray flock. These parrots were a bit different, though — they swore like sailors.
They were initially quarantined away from the other parrots so they wouldn’t spread their cussing habits. Unfortunately, that only made them swear more because the only things they heard from each other were fouler and fouler expletives.
It’s not entirely the parrots’ fault, though. Steve Nichols, the LWP CEO, said that swear words are very easy for the birds to learn because most people say them in the same tone.
“When you tell someone to eff off, you usually say it the same every time,” Nichols told CNN.
The five foul-mouthed parrots were bad enough. But then the zoo got three more of them.
So, they now had eight birds in their hands, saying things that we absolutely won’t repeat here. What could they do?
Peer Pressure
Isolation therapy didn’t cure the birds’ swearing habit, and other creative attempts have failed as well. Faced with the facts, the zoo has decided to basically give up.
They’ve decided the release the cussing parrots into a larger flock.
“We’ve put eight really, really offensive, swearing parrots with 92 non-swearing ones,” Nichols said.
And when he calls them offensive, he means it.
“When we came to move them, the language that came out of their carrying boxes was phenomenal, really bad. Not normal swear words, these were proper expletives,” he added.
The zoo hopes that hearing all the sounds of their non-swearing peers will encourage the eight others to watch their language. Nichols believes the potty-mouthed parrots could learn “all the nice noises like microwaves and vehicles reversing” that the other birds make.
But what if the plan ends up working the other way around? It could well be that the zoo will soon have 100 cursing parrots instead of eight.
According to Nichols, initial results have been positive, but he admits that there’s a chance the new rehabilitation method could backfire.
“It’s going to turn into some adult aviary,” he said, describing the possible worst-case scenario.
At Least They’re Popular
Yet, even if the 92 other birds picked up the swearing habits, it might not be the worst thing in the world. After all, zoo guests seem to love the foul-mouthed fowl.
The cussing parrots have a habit of laughing (or imitating the sound of human laughter) after they blurt out a particularly filthy expletive. That’s because they’re simply imitating the most common reaction from zoogoers.
Part of the fun is probably the variety of voices the birds swear in.
“Six of them have got men’s voices, two of them have got ladies’ voices. When they’re all swearing, it does sound really bad,” said Nichols.
Visitors tend to get in on the foul-mouthed fiesta as well.
“We did hear a lot more customers swearing at parrots than we did parrots swearing at customers,” admitted Nichols.
Despite all that, Nichols has high hopes that being around their properly behaving feathered friends will clean up some of the parrots’ vocabulary. That said, LWP will probably never have to worry about losing their big attraction.
“I don’t think they will ever lose the swear because as soon as somebody swears, they’ll be swearing as well,” Nichols said.