The Lincolnshire Wildlife Park in the UK is trying a new plan to contain its growing group of foul-mouthed African grey parrots. The zoo will introduce the expletive-loving birds to a larger flock in hopes that the other parrots will pass along their good manners. But there is a chance that the experiment will only end up causing more bird cussing.
In 2020, the Lincolnshire Wildlife Park adopted five African grey parrots—Billy, Tyson, Eric, Jade, and Elsie—that soon revealed themselves to be very talented at throwing out swear words. Though they were immediately a hit with the public, the zoo decided to pull them from the main outdoor aviaries and placed them with other colonies away from the public eye in an attempt to reduce their swearing. When they returned months later, the birds were noticeably less foul but still sometimes cursed and laughed like sailors. The zoo eventually erected a sign about the unfriendly language in front of their exhibit.
“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,” Steve Nichols, the park’s chief executive, told CNN.
For a time, the situation was manageable enough. But the park has since added three more cursing parrots—Eric, Captain, and Sheila—to the bunch, and officials are now trying a radical approach to cut down on the cussing. They will integrate all eight blasphemous birds into a large flock of parrots, 100 in total, with the hope being that the main group’s G-rated utterances will catch on with the rascally crew.
The move isn’t just about helping reduce the birds’ swearing. African greys are social animals and require being part of a large flock to thrive. It’s unlikely that the birds will completely abandon their foul-mouthedness since a parrot’s vocabulary usually doesn’t shrink, Nichols said. And there is the chance that the zoo’s experiment could go hilariously wrong.
“Ultimately, I think the swearing will be diluted,” Nichols told the BBC. “[But] we could end up with 100 swearing parrots on our hands. Only time will tell.”