London - Britain's seaside towns are at war
with their seagulls, urging visitors not to feed the birds in an
effort to stop them snatching titbits like potato chips from
tourists' hands.
Warning signs deck promenade railings from Scarborough to
Broadstairs and beyond but now research from the University of
Exeter has suggested an easy way for holidaymakers to deter the
gulls - just stare at them.
The research showed that with a human staring at them,
herring gulls took 21 seconds longer to approach a bag of chips
then when left apparently unobserved.
"Gulls are often seen as aggressive and willing to take food
from humans, so it was interesting to find that most wouldn’t
even come near during our tests," said lead author Madeleine
Goumas, of the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at Exeter’s
Penryn Campus in Cornwall.
The researchers tried to test 74 gulls but most flew away or
would not approach. Just 27 approached the food and 19 completed
the "looking at" and "looking away" tests.
"Of those that did approach, most took longer when they were
being watched," Goumas said. "Some wouldn’t even touch the food
at all, although others didn’t seem to notice that a human was
staring at them."