Shouting at seagulls could stop them stealing your food

Shouting at seagulls makes them more likely to leave your food alone, research shows.

University of Exeter researchers put a closed Tupperware box of chips on the ground to pique herring gulls’ interest.

Once a gull approached, they played either a recording of a male voice shouting the words, “No, stay away, that’s my food”, the same voice speaking those words, or the ‘neutral’ birdsong of a robin.  

They tested a total of 61 gulls across nine seaside towns in Cornwall and found that nearly half of those gulls exposed to the shouting voice flew away within a minute.

Only 15% of the gulls exposed to the speaking male voice flew away, while the rest walked away from the food, still sensing danger.

In contrast, 70% of gulls exposed to the robin song stayed near the food for the duration of the experiment.

“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,” said Dr Neeltje Boogert of the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at Exeter’s Penryn Campus in Cornwall.

“But the difference was that the gulls were more likely to fly away at the shouting and more likely to walk away at the speaking.

“So when trying to scare off a gull that’s trying to steal your food, talking might stop them in their tracks but shouting is more effective at making them fly away.”

The recordings, in which five male volunteers recorded themselves uttering the same phrase in a calm speaking voice and, separately, in a shouting voice, were adjusted to be at the same volume, which suggests gulls can detect differences in the acoustic properties of human voices.

“Normally when someone is shouting, it’s scary because it’s a loud noise, but in this case all the noises were the same volume, and it was just the way the words were being said that was different,” said Dr Boogert.

“So it seems that gulls pay attention to the way we say things, which we don’t think has been seen before in any wild species, only in those domesticated species that have been bred around humans for generations, such as dogs, pigs and horses.”

The experiment is designed to show that physical violence is not necessary to scare off gulls, and the researchers used male voices as most crimes against wildlife are carried out by men.

“Most gulls aren’t bold enough to steal food from a person, I think they’ve become quite vilified,” said Dr Boogert.

“What we don’t want is people injuring them. They are a species of conservation concern, and this experiment shows there are peaceful ways to deter them that don’t involve physical contact.”

“Herring gulls respond to the acoustic properties of men’s voices” is published in Biology Letters.