dc.contributor.author | Kelley, L | |
dc.contributor.author | Boogert, N | |
dc.contributor.author | Goumas, M | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2020-02-03T14:11:20Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2020-02-26 | |
dc.description.abstract | While many animals are negatively affected by urbanisation, some species appear to thrive in urban environments. Herring gulls (Larus argentatus) are commonly found in urban areas and often scavenge food discarded by humans. Despite increasing interactions between humans and gulls, little is known about the cognitive underpinnings of urban gull behaviour and to what extent they use human behavioural cues when making foraging decisions. We investigated whether gulls are more attracted to anthropogenic items when they have been handled by a human. We first presented free-living gulls with two identical food objects, one of which was handled, and found that gulls preferentially pecked at the handled food object. We then tested whether gulls’ attraction to human-handled objects generalises to non-food items by presenting a new sample of gulls with two non-food objects, where, again, only one was handled. While similar numbers of gulls approached food and non-food objects in both experiments, they did not peck at handled non-food objects above chance levels. These results suggest that urban gulls generally show low levels of neophobia, but that they use human handling as a cue specifically in the context of food. These behaviours may contribute to gulls’ successful exploitation of urban environments. | en_GB |
dc.description.sponsorship | Royal Society (Government) | en_GB |
dc.identifier.citation | Vol. 7 (2). Published online 26 February 2020. | en_GB |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.1098/rsos.191959 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10871/40708 | |
dc.language.iso | en | en_GB |
dc.publisher | Royal Society | en_GB |
dc.rights | © 2020 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. | |
dc.subject | herring gulls | en_GB |
dc.subject | human-wildlife interactions | en_GB |
dc.subject | interspecific social learning | en_GB |
dc.subject | neophobia | en_GB |
dc.subject | object choice | en_GB |
dc.subject | social enhancement | en_GB |
dc.title | Urban herring gulls use human behavioural cues to locate food | en_GB |
dc.type | Article | en_GB |
dc.date.available | 2020-02-03T14:11:20Z | |
dc.identifier.issn | 2054-5703 | |
dc.description | This is the final version. Available from The Royal Society via the DOI in this record. | en_GB |
dc.identifier.journal | Royal Society Open Science | en_GB |
dc.rights.uri | http://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved | en_GB |
dcterms.dateAccepted | 2020-02-03 | |
exeter.funder | ::Royal Society (Government) | en_GB |
rioxxterms.version | VoR | en_GB |
rioxxterms.licenseref.startdate | 2020-02-03 | |
rioxxterms.type | Journal Article/Review | en_GB |
refterms.dateFCD | 2020-02-03T14:10:46Z | |
refterms.versionFCD | AM | |
refterms.dateFOA | 2020-03-25T16:56:29Z | |
refterms.panel | A | en_GB |