Seagulls Prefer Food That Humans Have Handled, Study Finds

In many urban areas, herring gulls can commonly be seen scavenging through the food discarded by humans. In fact, there have been many cases of seagulls snatching food directly from people's hands.

For a new study, researchers wanted to investigate seagulls’ feeding behavior, particularly whether they are simply attracted by the sight of food or if it is the humans’ actions that draw the creatures’ attention.

To find out, researchers conducted an experiment wherein they approached individual seagulls and presented them with two buckets on the ground. Each of the buckets had a flapjack underneath and, once the buckets were removed, the researcher picked up and held one of the flapjacks for 20 seconds then placed it down on the ground again.

Twenty four of the 38 seagulls pecked at the flapjacks and, of the 24, 19 (79 percent) chose the flapjack that was handled by the researcher.

The researchers repeated the experiment to determine whether it is actually human handling that motivates the seagulls’ preference, this time with non-food items that were shaped like food. Interestingly, 23 of the 32 seagulls pecked at one of the objects, with 15 (65 percent) of them pecking the handled non-food item.

According to the researchers, the seagulls’ preference for the handled non-food item is not significantly different from “chance” levels, suggesting that the seagulls presented interest in the unfamiliar item but that the appearance of food is also particularly important to drawing seagulls’ attention.

Further, although more seagulls pecked at the handled food items than the handled non-food items, overall, the total number of seagulls pecking at either of the two choices is quite similar.

“Our findings suggest that gulls are more likely to approach food that they have seen people drop or put down, so they may associate areas where people are eating with an easy meal,” senior author Dr. Laura Kelley said.

As lead author Madeleine Goumas explains, the results show that human cues, in fact, play a significant part in the way that seagulls find their food. This, according to Goumas, could also partly explain why seagulls have been so successful in urban settings.

That said, the results also highlight the importance of proper waste disposal. Although purposefully providing for the food of animals may be beneficial for some species, the effect of the shift of seagulls’ diet from natural sources to human-linked sources is still unclear.

The study is published in the Royal Society Open Science.