Of course, depending on their nature, they could also dig for crabs or mollusks in the mud on the shore, maybe they could even pull a live fish out of the waves with a daring dive. But why bother when there are people and their bags of crisps? Apparently that’s what the herring gulls think at least on the promenade of the British seaside resort of Brighton.
A team led by the Austrian Franziska Feist, who researches at the University of Sussex, is now reporting in the specialist magazine BiologyLetters about advanced so-called kleptoparasitism in the grim-looking gulls. This is what biologists call the tendency of some animals to steal food from other living beings. For example, white-tailed eagles snatch fish from other birds.
Humans serve as tasters for seagulls
The seagulls in Brighton have now gone a step further, as the researchers showed in an experiment. In it, they taped two different types of potato chips to a brick wall on Brighton’s seafront. Green bags contained salt and vinegar flavored chips, while blue bags contained cheese and onion flavored chips. Then the biologists sat a few meters apart on the wall and waited – camera at hand – what would happen.
As long as the scientists waited, less than 20 percent of the birds showed any interest in the bags. But as soon as the human study leaders started to nibble the chips themselves, it was almost 50 percent. Of these, and this is what is new about this study, 98 percent of the clever animals followed the people’s choice of color in the bag. They serve as tasters for the seagulls, so to speak, when it comes to the difficult question of which chips would be more worthwhile.
A remarkable ability, said lead author Feist dem Guardians, “after all, there are no humans in the evolutionary history of seagulls”. Apparently, the birds themselves quickly learned that they can digest what people like. Not surprisingly, seagull populations thrive in human environments while declining in natural habitats.