Don't Want Seagulls To Steal Your Food? A New Study Suggests Staring Them Down

PITTSBURGH (CNET/KDKA) — It's like a scene from a Alfred Hitchcock movie.

You're sitting down at Point State Park, about to eat your lunch, when all of a sudden seagulls star appearing out of nowhere.

Or who hasn't been to Lake Erie, about to dive into a basket of Sara's fries when you hear a flock of seagulls swirling above you — cawing — waiting to attack and snatch a fry out of your fingers.

Worse — if it's your kids holding that juice or sandwich — those seagulls thinking, an easy target.

Well, a new study suggests you can battle the seagulls with your eyes.

Researchers at the University of Exeter in the UK looked into whether staring at seagulls might make them not want to take your food. The study showed that on average it took 21 seconds longer for seagulls to go up to the food with humans staring at them.

"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," said Madeleine Goumas, lead author of the study Herring gulls respond to human gaze direction, published in the journal Biology Letters.

Learn more about the study on CNET.com