This is Damien the cockatoo. He won't be dancing for 'likes'

A dark trade in exotic birds is flourishing, driven by online videos of performing animals

- James Tapper

In a different life, Damien the galah might have been an internet star, like Molly the African grey parrot (4.7m TikTok likes) or Furby the umbrella cockatoo (450,000 followers).

Molly orders her owner's smart speaker to play songs and dances along to them, and Furby sings along to Hamilton tracks - perfect doomscroll bait.

Instead, Damien spent much of this year in quarantine at a facility run by the Animal and Plant Health Agency (Apha) in a secret location in the north of England. Julie Lane can’t be sure why someone tried to smuggle Damien into the UK from Australia, but she and other Apha staff believe TikTok-famous birds are fuelling a surge in wildlife crime.

“It’s starting to climb because of TikTok and people putting up pictures of their parrot dancing,” says Lane, who is head of Apha’s National Wildlife Management Centre. “So the numbers coming in are getting larger, and we're expecting more.”

Parrots are big on the internet. It’s not just Molly or Furby. Their ability to mimic human speech patterns means that clips of the birds appearing to talk to their owners — often swearing, beatboxing or even headbanging - have racked up tens of millions of views as videos, memes and gifs.