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

Discussion (7 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

kaikai•about 3 hours ago

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•about 1 hour ago

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.

nephihaha•about 3 hours ago

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.

Rury•about 2 hours ago

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.

adampunk•about 1 hour ago

It’s cats lol.

lobito25•about 4 hours ago

They know...

postflopclarity•about 3 hours ago

do they? if there's some insinuation here I'm not understanding it.

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

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Discussion (7 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews