Technically, seagulls are not a bird of prey. But try telling that to the snacking tourists on my nearest beach; they start scanning the skies for chip predators, ducking for cover like voles facing the claws of a kestrel.
Some research has found that no matter what lifestyle they lead, seagulls seem programmed to dive-bomb at boxes of fish and chips.
But a new study might have found a surprising answer: painting eyes on chop boxes.
Why does that help?
According to a paper published in Ecology and Evolution, “gulls were slower to approach and less likely to peck a takeaway food box with eye-like stimuli compared to a box without eyes”.
The researchers measured how often herring gulls approached boxes with eyes painted on them with their approach to plain boxes. They were slower to approach the more watchful-seeming containers and pecked them less often.
Overall, the step reduc...
English (US)