Parrots are interesting because they can talk and sound like other animals. But if they learn the wrong words, this can get them in trouble! Five African grey parrots that lived at the Lincolnshire Wildlife Park were taken away from the public and put in separate cages after they started swearing at people who came to the park. Everyone saw the funny side of the situation, so no one was hurt.
Billy, Elsie, Eric, Jade, and Tyson were given to the zoo in the middle of August. But the new people started telling each other to swear, and something had to be done before things got out of hand (or is that wing?).
The CEO of Lincolnshire Wildlife Park, Steve Nichols, told Bored Panda that the parrots are doing very well after being separated and that, since they are very social animals, they fit in quickly. Read on to find out what else Nichols has to say about birds.
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Five parrots started cussing at people, so they were separated and taken out of sight. Luckily, nobody felt offended
Nichols told Bored Panda that the swear words the parrots used were “very strong” and might even make some sailors blush. He also said that he has never met anyone who didn’t regret teaching their parrots to curse.
Nichols says that it’s not hard to get parrots to forget certain words or phrases: “They’ll eventually join a flock of more than 200 African greys, and hopefully they’ll have too much to think about.”
The staff had hoped that letting the parrots go outside would help them learn to watch what they say. Alas! They didn’t give up. When someone answered, it just made them swear more.
“We saw it right away. Parrots swearing is nothing new for us, but we’ve never had five at the same time. “Most parrots don’t like being outside, but for some reason, these five love it,” the Nichols told PA.
Now, the parrots are in different parts of the zoo so they don’t teach each other to swear like sailors. Even though no one complained about how loud the birds were, they were kept apart to keep young visitors safe and so the parrots could learn the sounds of other African greys.
“People have come to us, but they find it very funny, and we haven’t gotten a single complaint. People laugh a lot when a parrot tells them to [eff] off. “It’s made me smile a lot during a very hard year,” Nichols said.
The Lincolnshire Wildlife Park has more famous birds than just the five African greys. Chico, a parrot who lives at the zoo, made headlines in September when he learned to sing pop songs, including Beyoncé’s “If I Were a Boy” from 2008.
The Lincolnshire Wildlife Park is the best Animal Rehabilitation Center in the UK. It is set in a Nature Reserve that is more than 650k square feet in size. It has more than 2,000 people living there, and the National Parrot Sanctuary, the biggest place of its kind in the world, is there. More parrots have been saved by the park than by anyone else in the UK.
