At Lincolnshire Wildlife Zoo, eight parrots who learned to swear will be sent to another flock for re-education. Last year, the zoo was forced to isolate five of the parrots from visitors because their speech was too rough. This is reported by daily.afisha.ru with reference to the BBC.
This year, the zoo decided to try a different approach. Five old “hooligan” birds and three new ones will be added to a flock of 92 calmer parrots.
He hopes the eight parrots will learn to imitate more pleasant sounds, such as cars. However, he also fears that the remaining 92 birds will pick up the slurs, and then only adult visitors will be allowed into the enclosure.
Park director Steve Nichols notes that, despite the long isolation, the five birds are settling well into the flock, but they still occasionally swear and even laugh, imitating the most common reaction to their obscene speech.
“We put them where there's a lot of noise, which is great, from gates creaking to doors slamming to people laughing and cell phones,” says Nichols.
The parrots accurately repeat the sounds they hear, so “six of them have male voices, two have female voices, and when they all swear, it sounds just terrible,” says the head of the zoo.
African gray parrots are highly social animals that live in large flocks (up to 1000 birds). Their intelligence has been compared to that of monkeys, whales and dolphins.
