Parrots

About

Parrots are a type of bird that can be found in subtropical and tropical areas. There are three types of parrots: New Zealand parrots, true parrots and cockatoos. Because of their ability to imitate human voices and non human sounds viral videos of parrots mimicking have spread rapidly online.

Online History

One of the earliest viral videos about parrots was uploaded on July 2nd, 2006, by YouTuber Autograph Authentic,^[1] which features a parrot beatboxing. The video was featured on many sites including Neatorama^[8] and CreatedDigitalMusic.^[7] As of May 2014, the video has gained over 8.7 million views.

One of the highest viewed parrot video was uploaded on November 8th, 2010, by YouTuber peachy525.^[11] The video features a parrot singing the 2001 Drowning Pool song “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor.” As of May 2014, the video has gained over 8.4 million views.

The height of parrots’ search interest came in December 2012. The most popular video from this time period is titled “Parrot Dances Gangnam Style (Rosie),” which features a parrot dancing to the 2012 PSY song ‘Gangnam Style.’ The video was uploaded on December 24th, 2012 by YouTuber auntphibian.^[10] As of May 2014, the video has gained over 600,000 views.

Fandom

The subreddit r/parrots^[9] has over 6,000 subscribers as of May 2014. As of May 2014, a search query for “parrot” on YouTube^[5] yields more than 350,000 results and Facebook’s topic page^[6] on parrots has gained over 60,000 likes. Parrot GIFs, photos, and videos frequently circulate through Tumblr and popular Tumblr blogs focused on parrots include fyeahparrots^[2] and hellyeahparrots.^[3] As of May 2014, there are over 100,000 fan art submissions tagged “parrot,” on DeviantArt.^[4]

Related Memes

Paranoid Parrot

Paranoid Parrot is an advice animal image macro series featuring a blue and yellow parrot looking over its shoulder. The captions often relay a mundane scenario or an everyday situation (ex: “save game file”) followed by an irrational response driven by paranoia.