The Lincolnshire Wildlife Park in the United Kingdom is trying to get their eight African grey parrots to stop cursing by integrating them with the rest of their kind, hatching the new plan Tuesday.
Five foul-mouthed parrots that were donated to the park back in 2020 were previously isolated as a means to reduce the cursing, CNN reported. The isolation strategy was initially adopted due to the fact the five birds would not stop swearing at visitors, CBS reported. (RELATED: As If 2023 Couldn’t Get Any Weirder, Turns Out Your Favorite Bird Of Paradise Might End Humanity)
The three other cursing parrots were just donated to the park, leading to the change in strategy, according to CNN. Steve Nichols, the park’s chief executive, said while no visitor complained about the behavior and most found it amusing, the park wanted to spare children from the foul mouthed avians, according to The Associated Press (AP).
British zoo has a new plan to rehabilitate its potty-mouthed parrots. @#€#$%! https://t.co/fPWx927Z4u
— Kevin Cole (@KevinColeOmaha) January 23, 2024
“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,” Nichols told CNN. “We’ve put eight really, really offensive, swearing parrots with 92 non-swearing ones.”
Nichols told CNN if the park’s strategy works, the eight parrots will learn “nice noises.” However, if the rest of the flock picked up the cuss words, “it’s going to turn into some adult aviary.” The integration appeared to be “mostly” successful, but the parrots still occasionally swore and laughed afterwards at their foul language, Nichols said.
The intelligence birds easily pick up curse-words due to humans delivering these expletives in the same tone and context, Nichols told CNN.
African grey parrots are highly social animals tending to nest with thousands of others of their kind, according to World Animal Protection. Absence of social interaction is stressful for these creatures and can lead toward the parrots inflicting self-harm.