Parrots possess a wonderful ability to mimic human speech. This can be enchanting and fascinating in equal measure. However, this amazing skill can also prove to be incredibly inconvenient. If you would rather that your partner doesn’t know about your affair, then don’t conduct it in earshot of your feathered friend! Your parrot might give you away.

The Adulterous Husband

A husband in Kuwait has recently found himself in hot water because of his pet parrot. The bird had heard the man’s flirtatious conversations with the housemaid and then decided to repeat them to his wife! Perhaps this was a parrot with a conscience or one which favoured the wife as its keeper! Either way, the bird had picked up on the conversations in the house and then blurted them out.

Severe Implications

This would be an amusing story if it had taken place in the western world. However, in Kuwait, adultery is illegal and so the bird’s outbursts had much more serious implications.

The wife had started to suspect her husband of cheating after she had returned home from work early one day and found him to be unnerved by her unexpected appearance. Then the parrot repeated what it had heard and the wife felt that her suspicions had been confirmed. She filed a complaint at the Hawally police station and her husband could have found himself in a great deal of trouble.

Prison and Hard Labour

Adultery is punishable by a prison sentence or hard labour in the Gulf States. But in this instance the man escaped an unpleasant fate because the prosecuting officer felt that the parrot’s evidence was not compelling and that the case against the man could not be proven. The officer believed that the bird could have heard the phrases that it had mimicked on the television.

A Parrot Reveals A Cheating Girlfriend

This is not the first time that a parrot has outed a cheat. In 2006, an English computer programmer discovered that his girlfriend was having an affair when their pet bird kept repeating “I love you Gary”! As the programmer’s name was Chris, he became rather concerned!

The African grey’s words clearly embarrassed girlfriend Suzy and so her guilt was revealed. She eventually admitted that she was having an affair and that it was with a colleague called Gary.

Do Parrots Understand What They Are Saying?

Parrots are highly intelligent birds. Recent research has demonstrated that they do understand the meaning of some words and are not merely mimics. It is unlikely that the parrots which gave away their owners’ affairs understood what they were saying but you never know. Birds can count and respond to commands. Perhaps they also get distressed when they sense infidelity and feel the need to blurt it out.

Birds do understand what they are saying but only sometimes and certainly not enough to know when they shouldn’t say it!