Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
Have you had it with annoying pigeons? They might be enough to make you want to get away from it all and go to the beach. Of course, as soon as that happens, you’ve got seagulls to contend with, and they’re even more annoying and cravenly hungry. Many a tourist has had their food quickly swiped by the guileful gulls, who delight in their theft. However, some new research has found what might be perhaps the best way to save your food: by yelling at them.
Some seagulls yell back. (Alvesgaspar/Creative Commons)
Researchers at the University of Exeter must have found this a nagging problem, so they decided to put a theory to the test. They put some chips in a closed Tupperware container on the ground, which would naturally attract seagulls. We’ll say, however, that since this was the UK, we can’t tell whether they mean, like, potato chips or fries. Regardless, birds wanted what was in there, and the scientists played one of three audio clips, none of which was “I Ran,” by the ‘80s new wave band A Flock Of Seagulls.
One of them was a male shouting, “No, stay away, that’s my food.” The other was the same voice, but saying it instead of shouting. The third was a robin’s birdsong, which they called “neutral,” but translated into “you come near this food, I’ll make your breast red too – with blood.”
Stephen Seagal also wants your food. (K Zhestovskaya/Creative Commons)
61 gulls were tested in nine towns across Cornwall. About half of them flew away from the food within a minute when the guy was yelling at them. The remaining half might have been yelling back, but the study didn’t say. Only 15% flew away from the calmer voice, with the rest calmly walking away, knowing that they might be in trouble. On the other hand, 70% of the gulls that heard the robin singing stuck around.
There’s a valuable lesson to be learned here, and that’s that you should probably never go to the shore. That’s not the takeaway the researchers got, however. “We found that urban gulls were more vigilant and pecked less at the food container when we played them a male voice, whether it was speaking or shouting,” Dr. Neeltje Boogert of the Center for Ecology and Conservation at Exeter’s Penryn Campus in Cornwall said.
What’s interesting is that the shouting and the talking were at the same volume, and even the non-yelling voice gave them pause. So they think seagulls are the first non-domesticated animals to pay attention to how humans say things. That’s made more impressive when you consider that many humans don’t even pay attention to how humans say things.
This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
