Science Friday - African Grey Parrots Are Popular—And It’s Fueling Illegal Trade

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

African grey parrots are internet stars. It’s easy to see why—the charismatic birds sing, tell jokes, and sling profanities. But how do the endangered birds get from African forests to your feed?��Wildlife crime reporter Rene Ebersole joins Host Flora Lichtman to describe her investigation into the global parrot trade, and the black market for wild African greys that is threatening their existence.Guest: Rene Ebersole is Editor In Chief at Wildlife Investigative Reporters and Editors (WIRE).Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.  Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Hi, it's Ira Flato. The SciFri Book Club is reading the biggest ideas in the universe by physicist Sean and Carol for our December pick, and you are invited to join the fun. If you're in New York City, come see Sean and me live at the Green Space on Friday, December 5th, or join us online for the free live stream. Sign up for the book club today at ScienceFriiday.com slash book club to get all the details. Hey, I'm Flora Lichten, and you're listening to Science Friday. Can you picture parrots, the cute, charismatic stars of your TikTok feed perched at the center of a global crime web? The illegal wildlife trade is on car with guns, human trafficking, and drugs. But the thing is, it's a low-risk, high-reward crime. Surely you've seen a video like this at some point.

Let the bird out. African gray parrots are internet stars. And you can see why. I mean, they're fascinating to watch. They sing, tell jokes, sling profanities. They're perfect for the algorithm. But how do they get from African forests to your feed? That's the subject of a new investigation into the global parrot trade and the black market for wild African grays that's threatening their existence. Joining me now is Renee Ebersol. She's the editor-in-chief at Wildlife investigative reporters and editors, Wire, and her feature story on the African Gray Parrot Trade just published in Rolling Stone. Renee, welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. It's great to be here. So what's the demand like for these birds? There's a very strong demand for African gray parrots.

They're very popular online. Many of the TikTok stars have millions of fans. And that attention online has fueled an interest. and more people having them as pets. And because of that interest, people who tend to exploit systems legal or illegal are trafficking them. I feel like I've heard that they're really smart,

you know, first grader level intelligence. Is that internet hype? Is there science on that? There is a lot of science on that. Actually, a researcher named Irene Pepperberg did 30 or more years of study with a parrot she named Alex. and she found that they can use language meaningfully. They understand abstract concepts, and they can show evidence of self-awareness.

They're really like the great apes of the bird world. Their brains are the size of a walnut, but they do have intelligence on par with young children. Who's buying them? Is it a global market? It is a global market. Many of the ones from Africa, so either from the wild in Central and West Africa, or from breeding farms in South Africa are shipped to the Middle East and Asia. And that's because the United States banned wild bird imports quite a long time ago. And then Europe followed banning wild bird imports because of concerns about avian influenza.

So right now, most of the birds that are bred in Africa or taken from the wild are either going through legal channels or illegal channels to the Middle East and Asia. And how much do they cost? When I was in Dubai, I saw them for up to $800. But here in the United States, you might pay as much as $7,000 for an African gray parrot. And those birds are descended from wild African gray parrots brought here before the United States made the ban. Wow. Okay. And what is their conservation status in the wild? In 2016, the species was declared in danger. at risk of extinction in the wild.

Wild African gray populations have plummeted by up to 99% in some parts of Africa since the 1990s. It is illegal for African gray parrots to be taken from the wild. Even in the DRC as of this August, it was finally made officially illegal to take or trade African gray parrots from the wild. Okay, so tell me more about this black market for them. So there's two ways that they are trafficked. Either they're caught in the forest by poachers. And it's important to say that many of these poachers are just trying to make a living. It's really not the poachers who are the problem. It's the people who are buying them and shipping them illegally and on these commercial enterprises. The middlemen. Yeah, the middlemen. The people at the lowest level are everyday people who they might be fishing. fishermen, but they see this as another opportunity to make as little as $10 a bird. The middlemen can sell them for a lot more than that.

And then the final exporter is shipping them abroad, it's as much as 10 or 20 times what the little poacher would get paid. So that's how the ones from the wild end up being trafficked. The other way that they can be trafficked sometimes is it's always been believed that the legal trade from South Africa, which is the world's largest exporter of captive bred African grays. It's always been suspected that some wild birds may be laundered through that system and passed off as birds that were raised legally. The other way birds are trafficked, and this is more of an emerging trend, is the egg trade. Eggs are a lot easier to transport than live birds. And it seems like

The South African breeders, some of them anyway, there's always a couple bad actors in every system, are passing their eggs off to couriers who've been caught smuggling them into Asia. When you talk about trafficking, what should I be picturing? I mean, is it like a paperwork thing or like, obviously they're sourced in the wrong way, but are they also being smuggled in a shipment of potato chips or something? thing. They can be sort of concealed in other shipments. And a lot of times that's with shipments of birds that are legal to be traded. So

like from the Democratic Republic of Congo, there's a couple species of parrots that are legal to trade. It is legal to catch them in the wild. And traffickers will sneak the African gray parrots into one

of those shipments. How does illegal parrot trade compared to other black markets or other, you know, things that are illegally trafficked, like drugs or guns? Like, is it the same model? Is it the same people? Yeah. It's oftentimes the same criminal networks. The illegal wildlife trade is on par with guns, human trafficking, and drugs. But the thing is, it's a it's a low-risk, high-reward crime, because the penalties for trafficking wildlife are vastly lower than for trafficking drugs or people. Is there a way to tell if the bird was taken from the wild or bred in captivity? Up until recently, it really has been very difficult for law enforcement to tell.

There are a couple red flags that they look for. Birds that are legally traded, when they're bred in a captive facility, they're fitted with tiny little leg bands. And each one of those bands has a unique ID so that they can be tracked from the place they were born and the day or the month they were born all the way to their final destination. So if birds do not have those bands, then they're assumed to be illegal. So they look for that and they look for fraudulent paperwork. And they also look for exporters who may have history of violation.

But up until recently, it was very difficult to tell. There's no test to tell the animals caught wild or in captivity. But now there is a new emerging technique that's been created by a researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her name is Valerie McKenzie. And she's pioneering a microbiome-based forensic technique to distinguish wildcaught parrots from captive-bred ones. Here's the thing that I don't quite understand. I would think it would be harder to catch them in the wild and take them across borders than to just breathe them. What am I missing? Well, the breeding actually is very expensive because it takes them four years to become sexually mature. So you have to, for that entire time, you have to feed them. You have to keep them healthy. It's really involved to keep a baby bird for four years.

to the point where it can start breeding. But with the wild birds, you know, they're there for the taking. And you can, you know, people, the traders can sell them for, you know, a much higher profit margin. And the birds that we see that you can buy here, they're on a separate track, right? Like, they're not being bred in captivity in South Africa or caught in the wild. They're bred in captivity here. Any parrot that you find in a pet store in the U.S. was probably bred in captivity here in the United States, and its ancestors would have been brought

into the country prior to wild bird in ports being banned. So, you know, there are a couple generations removed from those first wild birds brought to the United States that became like the seed birds for those bird farms. What's the solution? The solution to the trafficking problem from the people I spoke to in my reporting is stronger enforcement, more resources for investigations, more forensics so that evidence can be collected to be presented in court against potential traffickers, and stronger penalties for trafficking. So that's on that level. If people are wondering what they can do, Many of the people I spoke to talked about the fact that there are a lot of parrots that have been abandoned because these birds can live up to 80 years. Chances are if you buy an African gray parrot today, it may outlive you.

So a lot of times they get surrendered and then they go to refuges or bird rescues. There's a couple of them in the country, not that many. And they're overflowing. So if someone decides that they really have the time, it takes. to have one of these very demanding pets. You know, remember, they're smart as a five-year-old, and they demand a lot of attention. So if someone decides that they have the lifestyle

that can support that sort of pet, then from some people I spoke to, maybe the best idea is to find a bird that needs to be adopted, just like we adopt dogs and cats instead of buying from poppy mills. Do you think that the internet is changing the animal trade? Yes. For sure, the fact that you can see these animals performing and it creates a demand for more people to have them as pets is one thing.

But animals are also sold illegally on the same platforms where they're performing. The illegal wildlife trade online is thriving. Wow. You know, you launched this investigative reporting endeavor around wildlife. Why this topic? I have been writing about wildlife and the environment for more than 20 years. I have an ecology degree, so that's kind of where I started. I started in science before I got into journalism.

And I've always been interested in animal behavior. When I was first getting started in science, I worked with an orangutan doing a self-awareness study. So that was, I guess you could say that my interest in African gray parrots sort of sprung from that research that I'd done early on into animal intelligence and self-awareness. Renee Ebersole is the editor-in-chief at Wildlife Investigative Reporters and editors are Wire. An author of an investigation into the global trade in African gray parrots just published in Rolling Stone. There's a link to Renee's article on our website at ScienceFriday.com slash parrots. Thanks, Renee. Thank you.

Thanks for listening. Don't forget to rate and review us if you like the show. And you can always leave us a comment on this segment on Spotify. We'd love to hear from you. Today's episode was produced by Charles Bergquist. But a lot of folks helped make this show happen every single week, including Sandy Roberts. Robin Kasmur. George Harper.

Annie Nero. I'm Flora Lichtman. Thanks for listening.