Seagulls are getting bolder. They sometimes even just snatch chips or other snacks out of someone's hand. A simple intervention keeps half the birds away.

Eureka is the rubric for ‘product designs for tomorrow’ in De Ingenieur.

Sometimes an invention is easy to dream up but difficult to implement. Sometimes it is the other way around. The second category includes this idea to deter seagulls from snatching chips or ice creams from the hands of beachgoers: draw or stick a pair of highly visible eyes on the packaging or the snack itself. Research by ecologists at the University of Exeter, published in the journal Ecology and Evolution at the end of March, found the theft rate was then halved.

Fake eyes really work

Many animals become nervous and suspicious when stared at for a long time, scientists already knew. Now they have tested whether that trait can also be used to deter fry theft. They presented tempting takeaways to herring gulls in several coastal towns in the southern counties of Devon and Cornwall and offered them in boxes with and without eyes on them. Many gulls turned out not to trust the boxes with eyes and only pecked at the boxes without eyes. No habituation occurred here; it remained so after several repetitions of the experiment. However, the reaction differed per individual gull. Some gulls did not care about the fake eyes. The shape of the eyes was less important, round and square eyes worked equally well.

Whether snack bar owners on the coast will use different packaging remains to be seen. But those who go to the beach for a day and want to feast on ice cream or fries there can simply bring their own box of wiggle eyes. For a few euros, you will have enough to snack undisturbed for a year.

Photo: Depositphotos