Parrots Removed From Wildlife Park Once They Started Swearing At Customers

Oct 02, 2020

It is always comedic to see animals adopt human-like behavior patterns. From singing to dancing, parrots have been notorious for their mimicry of human behavior. A group of parrots at the Lincolnshire Wildlife Park have recently developed yet another talent, cursing.

The group of five African grey parrots was brought into the park on August 15th. According to a report by BBC, during their isolation period, they were kept in a room together and it was during this time that they appeared to have taught themselves how to curse. Of course, this behavior was highly comical to park employees, however, once the parrots began to use their foul language around park guests, it became a problem.

The CEO of the park, Steve Nichols claims that this is not the first time the park has adopted birds with such habits. As a consequence of their behavior, the parrots were placed into solitary.

This type of behavior is usually reinforced by body language. Nichols claims that when one of their parrot swears and a nearby person begins laughing, it is reinforced as a positive behavior. The parrots caught onto the behavior of the passers-by and began laughing amongst themselves as well.

With this newfound behavior, the group of parrots sounded like a group of men within some sort of bar setting. Although the customers claimed that they were fine with this behavior, the park would soon have a special weekend just for children.

The swearing birds were something to laugh about and take your mind away from the current state of our world, however, they would negatively influence the minds of the children. To correct their behavior, they were placed away from the main enclosures with a few other parrots, with hopes that they would adjust their behaviors, says Lincolnshire Live.

African grey parrots are excellent at learning vocalizations from all types of noises. Instead of keeping the group together, the best bet would be to separate them so that they could not influence each other. The parrots have malleable behaviors, similar to children. By isolating them, the employees would be able to correct their poor behaviors.

A majority of the park employees are against this because the mischievous parrots are much appreciated. The park's charity has lost close to half a million this year due to the pandemic and any type of distraction helps. Nichols hopes that the world will go back to normal by next Easter, but until then, the parrots are one of the best things they have.

Before the entry of these parrots, another one of their parrots had gone viral for singing a song by Beyoncé. Visitors often come to the park to visit the talented parrots that reside there. While it might be weird to see a guest swearing at parrots, hoping that they will swear back, for this park, it is completely normal.

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