Colourful language: The grey birds taught each other bad habbits during quarantine. Photo / Khalsa, Unsplash
Colourful language: The grey birds taught each other bad habbits during quarantine. Photo / Khalsa, Unsplash
"Who's been a naughty boy, then?"
A UK safari park has had to separate its parrots after they taught each other some bad behaviour and very colourful language.
The Lincolnshire Wildlife Park is home to a colony of 200 grey parrots – however in August they adopted five new birdsand these turned out to be trouble makers.
As new additions Billy, Eric, Tyson, Jade, and Elsie went into quarantine together before being introduced to the park. It was at this point they taught each other to swear, says park's owner Steve Nichols.
"For the last 25 years, we have always taken in parrots that have sometimes had a bit of blue language and we have really got used to that," he told local news.
However the park had never had so many develop the bad habit at once.
African Grey parrots are capable of mimicking speech and are known to pick up the odd phrase, but these five birds settled on a set of words that surprised their keepers. At the end of the quarantine period "that one room was just full of swearing birds," said Nichols.
The Lincolnshire Wildlife Park is home to a colony of 200 - mostly well behaved - grey parrots. Photo / Ovidu Creanga, Unsplash. Photo / Supplied
The animals have no idea what the words mean – they only know they get a reaction. "The more they swear the more you usually laugh which then triggers them to swear again," he said.
The next problem was the parrots began mimicking their keepers' laughter. "Before you know it just got to be like an old working men's' club scenario where they are all just swearing and laughing."
The wildlife park, which is a family attraction, was concerned that the other 200 parrots might pick up this bad behaviour.
"We were a little concerned about the children," Nichols told CNN.
"I get called a fat t**t every time I walk past."
The five offending parrots have been moved to another part of the park after this behaviour continued.
"People have come to us, they think it's highly amusing, we haven't had one complaint," Mr Nichols said.
