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A scientist claims to have discovered how finest to cease seagulls nicking your chips – by making eye contact with them earlier than they assault.
Staring and pointing on the ‘klepto’ winged raiders can scare them off from making an attempt to pinch your meals on a seaside time out, a professor mentioned.
Professional in animal behaviour Paul Graham added that to keep away from dive bombs from seagulls vacationers ought to stand in opposition to a wall for cover.
Chatting with the BBC’s Inside Science podcast, the College of Sussex educational mentioned: ‘No one has their chips stolen twice, it’s a tax you pay as a vacationer if you arrive at a seaside city.
‘You get caught as soon as and then you definately discover a place to face along with your again in opposition to a wall that stops the gull from having a line of assault on your chips.
‘Animals that steal are conscious of the eye of the person they’re making an attempt to steal from.’
‘If a fowl is within the air, making calls, and you might be apprehensive it’d attempt to assault you then simply merely looking at that fowl and pointing at it is going to cease it from coming in direction of you.’
He described gulls as a ‘kleptoparasitic’ species, they like stealing meals from different species as an alternative of doing the ‘arduous work’ of discovering it themselves.
He added: ‘One of many issues they’re famend for is being kleptoparasitic, which suggests they steal meals from different species so they’re utilizing their intelligence to be thieves relatively than placing within the arduous work catching that meals within the first place.’
In addition to giving recommendations on dodging chip pilfering, Prof Graham had an essential message about the way forward for gulls.
He mentioned: ‘By way of foraging on human meals then as a bunch, as a society we simply want to cut back the quantity of litter.
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‘Every fowl individually has study to which gadgets are fascinating and if we will scale back their entry to that, meals in bins and on the bottom, then these people won’t ever develop the boldness to steal these meals from people.’
One seagull, caught on digicam stealing baggage of crisps, has been banned for shoplifting from an area retailer.
Employees at Central store in Weymouth, Dorset estimate the fowl, nicknamed Steven Seagull, has snatched round two packing containers price of crisps previously few weeks.
The brazen thief sneaks in when the door is open, nabs a packet, runs again exterior, shakes it open, then shares the snack together with his seagull buddies.
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