It’s time to stop the search, the hunt for the real-world version of Homer Simpson is at an end. With Disney now owning The Simpsons, it’s surely only a matter of time before the studio gives the people of Springfield the live-action remake treatment, and luckily for the Mouse House the perfect person for the role of the clan’s perennially lazy patriarch has just announced themselves.
A hilarious video is going viral on TikTok for showcasing how one diehard couch potato of a dad has trained his family’s pet parrot to feed him snacks. Not just fetch him snacks, oh no, I mean actually waddle up his stomach and place the snacks in the guy’s mouth with its beak. Presumably he also tried to do this with his previous pet, Spider-Pig/Harry Plopper, but the results weren’t as effective.
While some commenters are sticking their noses up at the level of laziness on display here — and germophobes can’t handle the unsanitary eating methods — the majority of TikTok seems to be applauding this forever stationary father’s inventiveness. “Give this man a Nobel prize,” one quipped. Others, though, fear that the parrot won’t be able to be of aid with different foodstuffs. “I’m curious to how the bird feeds him on soup night,” wrote another.
As for what the parrot gets out of this, let’s hope he’s enjoying his job as much as he seems to be. “Parrot: oddly large baby but I love and feed him nonetheless,” reads one peek into his interior monologue, as shared by a telepathic commenter. For some, however, the fascinating thing about this video isn’t the cheese puff-carrying parrot or the Homer-alike dad, but the fact his daughter appears to be another 90s icon. “Is that Lindsay Lohan?” asks one incredulous commenter.
This isn’t fake, by the way; parrots really are this smart. Parrots, along with the corvid family (including crows and ravens), are considered the most intelligent birds out there. Parrots, in particular, have a remarkably similar neural makeup to primates (i.e. humans), possessing a region of the brain that mirrors the pontine nuclei in a human brain, which engenders thinking and information processing. Parrots aren’t just good at mimicry and chip-fetching, they’re even able to count, add, subtract, and can understand the concept of zero.
So, in some ways, this sofa-stuck pappa and his parrot pal are conducting a fascinating experiment into the similarities between the mammalian and birdlike brain. That dad must be feeling pretty S-M-R-T (I mean, S-M-A-R-T) right now.