A British park is attempting to rehabilitate parrots that were donated by owners who apparently trained them to utter profane words. The British Wildlife Park has implemented a new plan to re-educate the foul-mouthed parrots after they unleashed a barrage of curses. In 2020, five "foul-mouthed" African grey parrots, donated to the Lincolnshire Wildlife Park in East England, were isolated in an effort to improve their language. However, the team has recently adopted a different and "more risky" approach by integrating three newly donated birds—named Eric, Captain, and Sheila—with the five birds that have been in the park for a while.
"When we came to move them, the language that came out of their transport boxes was astonishing and really bad," said Steve Nichols, the park's CEO, to CNN. "These weren’t just ordinary curses, but strong expletives." He added, "We have eight swearing parrots alongside 92 non-swearing ones." Nichols mentioned that if the new strategy succeeds, the parrots might learn "nice words and mimic the sounds of vehicles, for example," which are preferred by other parrots. However, if the 92 others learn the expletives instead, "they will be moved to a cage."
After some time in isolation, the integration of the birds with non-swearing parrots has been successful "so far," according to Nichols, but they still curse occasionally. He explained that parrots accurately mimic the sounds they hear, so "six of them have male voices, and two have female voices, and when they start swearing together, it sounds really bad." The park has placed large signs warning visitors about the parrots' language, but Nichols stated that the management has not received any complaints.
