Drawing eyes on food packaging could be the key to keeping seagulls away

New research has concluded that seagulls take longer to approach or simply don’t even try to attack food when it’s in packaging with eyes on it.

The increasingly urban lifestyle of seagulls across Europe has made them experts in stealing food to unsuspecting people dining outdoors. Herring gulls, in particular, are gaining a reputation as food thieves in coastal towns such as Falmouth, Cornwall.

Observing this type of behavior led Ecology teachers to Laura Kelley e Neeltje Boogert explore new ways to deter these ingenious birds.

Your new show that display a pair of eyes on the packaging of food may be enough to stop some seagulls from stealing your food.

This complements a previous one, which showed that herring gulls approach food more slowly when someone is looking directly at themcompared to when they are looking to the side.

Many animals – both wild and domesticated – are very attentive to their eyes, which can indicate the presence of a predator or be used to communicate intentions. Direct eye contact generally conveys aggression, while looking away indicates a lack of threat.

Animals react defensively when they see eyes looking at them. This is probably an instinctive tendency: avoid being devoured by a predator can be an instantaneous reaction, explains Kelley in an article on .

Some animals may have developed markings to exploit this behavior. So-called eye spots are found on many insects, amphibians and fish, and come in a variety of colors, sizes and patterns.

Exactly how eye spots can deter predators has been the subject of intense debate among scientists for more than a century. They can increase predator caution for being mistaken for real eyes, or diverting attacks to less important parts of the body.

Considering that evolution suggests that eyes are a good way to increase animal caution, the idea of ​​imitating nature by using fake eyes to deter other animals has been tested in several contexts.

In Botswana, livestock are at risk of being devoured by ambush predators such as lions and leopards, leading to conflicts with farmers.

To test whether eye-spots could reduce predation risk, in 2016 researchers , or left them unmarked. The experiment was repeated on several herds and all attacks on cattle were recorded.

During the study, 19 cattle were killed by lions or leopards – but none of the heads with eye spots on the rump was among them.

They were also attacked less frequently than heads with crosses or heads without markings, suggesting that eye patches may be an effective repellent for a wide range of animals.

Moving away from the eyes

For their study on herring gulls, the authors tested this idea in coastal towns in Cornwall, where the herring gulls are known to seagulls steal food from people who eat outdoors.

They glued pairs of eyes to take-out food boxes and presented the seagulls individually with two boxes, placed two meters apart on the floor: a box with eyes and a box without eyes.

The seagulls seemed to be repelled by the eyes, as took longer to approach and were less likely to peck these boxes, compared to boxes without eyes.

They also wanted to know whether, over time, the seagulls would realize that the eyes in the boxes They weren’t really threatening.. To test this, they presented 30 seagulls with a takeaway box, with or without eyes, but repeated the process three times for each seagull in a short space of time.

About half of the birds never pecked the box with eyeswhile the other half quickly approached and pecked. This suggests there may be a lingering effect of false eyes in some gulls who don’t realize they are being tricked.

Now they want to test this in a more realistic scenario, partnering with food vendors and asking them to use takeaway food boxes with eyes. Although this may only deter half the seagulls from stealing food, perhaps when combined with other deterrence methods – including screaming – can impact the amount of food theft.

Eye-like markings have already been used to exclude birds from certain areas, including keeping starlings away from crops, seabirds from fishing nets and birds of prey from airports.

Food packaging with and without false eyes

Humans also react to eyes

It is interesting to note that people, like seagulls and many other animals, also pay attention to their eyes.

It has been demonstrated that images of human eyes reduce bicycle theftreinforce honesty and even increase donations to charitable institutions – all of this creating the impression of being watched.

This is probably because we are a social species and tend to act more honestly if we feel like we might be judged by an observer.

But, as with herring gulls, the effect on human behavior is inconsistent. Eye images can influence behavior in certain situations, but don’t work for everyone.

Whether it’s protecting your fries, bicycles or livestock, the next step is to understand why some animals (and people) don’t find eyes repulsive. But evidence already shows that false eyes can offer a cheap and simple way to mitigate conflicts with humans and other animals.