Parrots removed from zoo after they taught each other to swear, cursed out visitors

(TMU) – A group of five parrots at a zoo in the U.K. have been suspended from public view after they unleashed a stream of profanities at visitors.

The foul-mouthed birds began residing at Lincolnshire Wildlife Park on August 15, at which time they began teaching other curse words while quarantined in the same room altogether, according to the park’s management.

The mischievous African grey parrots – named Billy, Elsie, Eric, Jade, and Tyson – had joined a colony of 200 other grey parrots, and quickly began encouraging one another to begin swearing.

“We saw it very quickly; we are quite used to parrots swearing but we’ve never had five at the same time,” said CEO Steve Nichols, according to Evening Express. “Most parrots clam up outside, but for some reason these five relish it.”

Nichols separately told Lincolnshire Live that the park had previously taken in parrots “that have sometimes had a bit of blue language” and it is “very comical” – but in this case, things escalated rapidly to a situation beyond the park’s control.

“We took in five in the same week and because they were all quarantined together, it meant that one room was just full of swearing birds,” he said.

“The more they swear the more you usually laugh which then triggers them to swear again,” Nichols continued.

“But when you get four or five together that have learned the swearing and naturally learnt the laughing, so when one swears, one laughs and before you know it, it just got to be like an old working men’s club scenario where they are all just swearing and laughing.”

The parrots were put back on display when the park reopened following the lifting of health restrictions, and they immediately continued cursing – only this time, it was at visitors.

“Literally within 20 minutes of being in the introductory we were told that they had sworn at a customer and for the next group of people, all sorts of obscenities came out,” Nichols said.

Far be it from being offended, visitors actually quite enjoyed the verbal abuse.

“People have come to us, they think it’s highly amusing, we haven’t had one complaint,” Nichols said. “When a parrot tells tells you to f*ck off it amuses people very highly … It’s brought a big smile to a really hard year.”

However, the decision was eventually made to withdraw the creatures from public view as in expectation of the weekend rush of families, and especially children.

The parrots have now been placed in an enclosure where they will be surrounded by other parrots, and where park managers hope that the other noises will have a good influence on the birds.

Over 1,500 parrots reside at the park, and the last thing staff want is for the cursing trend to catch on among the broader population.

The five birds will eventually be released in separate areas of the park, ensuring that if they do curse, “it is not as bad as three or four of them all blasting it out at once.”

This isn’t the first time that parrots at the Lincolnshire zoo have made headlines. Chico, a nine-year-old yellow-crowned Amazon parrot, also became the focus of world attention after footage of the bird singing Beyonce’s If I Were A Boy recently went viral.