8 Cursing Parrots Cause Stir, Here's How the Zoo is Trying to Rehabilitate Them

Will this plan bleeping work or will it create 100 foul-mouthed birds

African greys are very social and need to be in large flocks. In these flocks, they can end up influencing each other, which can be a good or bad thing. (Photo by Magda Ehlers from Pexels)

These eight parrots have become an f-ing problem. The Lincolnshire Wildlife Park in the U.K. didn’t know it when they adopted five African grey parrots back in 2020. But Billy, Tyson, Eric, Jade, and Elsie had already developed a flair for the swear. These five soon began cussing out everyone around them. And now there are eight, which has prompted the zoo to attempt to use some peer pressure to keep these birds from verbally giving everyone the bird.

At first, not everyone viewed the initial five parrots cursing as a curse. It’s not as if many adults visiting the zoo were saying, “Well, I never,” and demanded that the birds be removed. In fact, the foul-mouthed parrots quickly garnered quite a few fans. After all, who doesn’t like having a potty-mouthed parrot around?

The parrots certainly were getting plenty of encouragement. A BBC News report from September 2020 quoted Steve Nichols, the chief executive of the park as saying, “With the five, one would swear and another would laugh and that would carry on.” It turns out that parrots were a bit like Samuel L. Jackson, Jonah Hill, or Kristin Stewart. Nichols explained that the parrots “swear to trigger reaction or a response.” This meant that when humans would appear shocked or respond with delight, this only encouraged the parrots to swear even more.

That may be OK in an R-rated or maybe even a PG-13 setting. The problem, though, is that the zoo didn’t want the parrots to be kidding around, so to speak, in such a manner. Zoos can be filled with children. And you can imagine how parents might not want their kids to say, “But the parrots taught me to say that bleep.” Therefore, after the initial ha-ha and hee-hee, later in 2020, the zoo decided to end this bull-bleep and sequester the birds away from the public amongst other colonies of more genteel birds.

A funny thing happened over the ensuing several months. The five parrots ended up toning things down quite a bit. Sure, they still cursed here and there and would continue to yuck it up every now and then with each other like a bunch of fraternity bros or sailor sisses. But the difference was nonetheless noticeable. Apparently, mixing amongst the other more cultured birds had rubbed off on these five. Or perhaps the other birds had called HR. Who knows for sure?

The zoo did eventually return these five parrots to public view but did erect a sign warning visitors about the parrots’ foul (or perhaps fowl) language. And, no, there’s no word on whether the parrots made any erection joke after the sign went up.

The zoo could handle these five for a while. But then three more foul-mouthed parrots—Eric, Captain, and Sheila—joined the zoo display. This made the five into an Oh Sh#$% Eight that became a bit too much to handle for the zoo. This wasn’t simply a case of parrots saying, “Polly wants a f-ing cracker.” Nichols told Issy Ronald reporting for CNN, “The language that came out of their carrying boxes was phenomenal, really bad. Not normal swear words, these were proper expletives." F-ing a.

So, the zoo is now hoping that some more peer pressure may tone things down further. The zoo is placing the eight potty-mouthed parrots with 92 G-rated parrots to see what will happen. Will this work? Will the eight be more like, “Pardon me, but do you have any Grey Poupon?” Or will it do the opposite? Will it produce 100 parrots whom you couldn’t take to your next church function? Only time will freaking tell.

Check out Bruce Y. Lee’s website for his other writing (e.g., his science and health coverage for Forbes and “A Funny Bone to Pick” for Psychology Today), his AI/computational research, his initiatives, his media appearances, and his other activities.