Urban birds are more scared of women than men – but scientists don't know why

I wonder if this is due to relative vigilance of men and women. This study observed that women tend to scan their environment much more than men: https://news.byu.edu/intellect/study-visually-captures-hard-...

I’ve observed that animals are pretty good at reading body language and can tell when they’re actually being seen by, rather than just sharing space with, a human.

	▲	apothegm 12 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Birds also tend to be reactive to forward facing pairs of eyes (because raptors, especially owls), so that would make sense. Beyond that, women are on average more likely to wear clothing or hair that flaps around. Or heels that make loud noises when they walk.
	▲	aaron695 14 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
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recursivecaveat 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wonder if spreading breadcrumbs is a more popular hobby among men than women?

	▲	zeristor 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Maybe more so for web developers. I’ll get my coat.

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nephihaha 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm wondering if there is some other variable in here. Is it clothing or hair length? Would men with long hair be more intimidating than women with short hair for example? How about certain types of clothing or footwear. Very odd.

The seagulls near me can recognise school children. They know they are more likely to pick up dropped food.

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Rury 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They did control for obvious appearance differences (e.g. color & type of clothing, hair length) and morphology (e.g. height/body size), even people's approach. But not more subtle traits such as gait, waist-hip ratio, odor...

One hypothesis suggested that in early history, women may have more commonly caught smaller prey (birds) than men did, and this fear could be evolutionarily ingrained.

	▲	nephihaha 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		To be fair, I don't think most birds have a good sense of smell (as dogs, cats, deer etc have) so that would discount odour. I suspect if there is a factor here it may be something that is obvious to the birds.
	▲	aaron695 12 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
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cindyllm 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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Lapsa 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

do they know why men are scared?

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AuthAuth 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

me to urban birds, me to

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lobito25 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They know...

	▲	postflopclarity 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		do they? if there's some insinuation here I'm not understanding it.

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adampunk 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It’s cats lol.