That's not to say that humanity's only effect on the animal kingdom is pure destruction; in fact, sometimes our ecological footprint looks more like a clown shoe.

Humanity's track record with animals has never been stellar. After centuries of ocean dumping, worldwide deforestation, domestication and overhunting, it's safe to say we've got a greasy, opposable thumb in every one of Mother Nature's pies.

6 Talking Birds Are Teaching Each Other to Swear

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Probably the only thing you know about parrots and cockatoos is that they can talk. Or, more specifically, that they can mimic human speech. Now, unless they're shockingly gifted, they don't understand a word they're saying. But a 4-year-old doesn't know what the word "poontang" means, either, and that doesn't stop him from repeating it and getting all of the other preschoolers saying it. We're finding out that birds kind of do the same thing.

After all, the pets that are raised among humans and learn (or learn to imitate) dozens of words sometimes either escape or are released into the wild. Now, because birds in the wild have no need for human language, you'd think they'd stop using it once they managed to get loose. But you would be wrong. They keep using what they learned and, more importantly, teach it to other birds.

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That's why people around Sydney, Melbourne and other big cities in Australia have found wild cockatoos using English phrases. Now ask yourself: If you had a bird that repeated whatever you said, what's the first thing you'd do? You'd start teaching it some goddamned swear words, that's what. Well, they do that in Australia, too. So, sometimes the birds have been heard cursing at people.

Now imagine how crazy you'd think you were going if one day you were walking through the woods and you suddenly heard a disembodied bird voice tell you to eat a dick.

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The weirdest part is, if the domesticated birds stay with a wild flock long enough, the words become part of the flock's calls. Scientists say that the way the birds learn their own chirps and calls is similar to how babies learn to speak, so these new calls (i.e., "Hey, asshole!") are just added to their repertoire. We're literally corrupting the birds' own language.