BreakingNews·190819 - 盯著海鷗看，防止它們偷你的食物

Researchers have come up with a useful tactic to deter seagulls from stealing your picnic sandwiches or making a grab for your French fries. The advice is to stare at the birds to prevent any food theft. This invaluable tip comes from a study from the University of Exeter in the UK. Researchers conducted tests at a beach on the effects of staring at the sea birds. They put a bag of fries on the ground and monitored how long it took gulls to approach and snatch the fries without a researcher looking at the birds. They then carried out the same test, but this time a researcher made eye contact as a bird approached. The birds took an extra 21 seconds to approach the food when a researcher stared at them.

研究人員想出了一個有用的策略來阻止海鷗偷你的野餐三明治或搶你的薯條。建議是盯著鳥看，防止食物被偷。這個寶貴的建議來自英國?？巳卮髮W的一項研究。研究人員在海灘上對凝視海鳥的效果進行了測試。他們把一袋薯條放在地上，觀察海鷗在沒有研究人員觀察的情況下接近和搶奪薯條需要多長時間。然后他們進行了同樣的測試，但這次研究人員在一只鳥靠近時進行了眼神交流。當研究人員盯著這些鳥看時，它們多花了21秒才接近食物。

The researchers concluded that the seagulls were deterred by the human gaze. Only 26 per cent of the birds made an attempt to take the researchers' food with the eye contact. Three-quarters of the birds just stood still and looked at the food or flew away. Lead researcher Madeleine Goumas said: "I noticed that gulls seemed to have a bad reputation for food-snatching, but I saw it happen quite rarely. When I did see it happen, gulls often swooped in from behind, and the people were completely oblivious. Gulls are often seen as aggressive and willing to take food from humans, so it was interesting to find that most wouldn't even come near during our tests."

研究人員的結論是，海鷗會被人類的目光嚇退。只有26%的鳥類試圖通過眼神交流來獲取研究人員的食物。四分之三的鳥只是靜靜地站著，看著食物或者飛走了。首席研究員瑪?shù)铝?middot;古馬斯說:“我注意到海鷗似乎有搶食的壞名聲，但我很少看到這種情況發(fā)生。當我看到它發(fā)生的時候，海鷗經(jīng)常從后面撲進來，人們完全沒有注意到。海鷗通常被認為具有攻擊性，并且愿意從人類身上獲取食物，所以有趣的是，在我們的測試中，大多數(shù)海鷗甚至都不會靠近人類。”