It’s well known that dogs want to eat what their human friends eat. Dogs get confused and frustrated when offered a human favorite food that tastes awful to the dog, like lemons.
What about non-domesticated animals like seagulls, who enjoy stealing human food? Are they influenced by our favorites?
A British study says yes, and the influence is remarkably subtle.
The researchers worked at Brighton Beach, a place where seagulls are in the habit of watching and scavenging human food. They used a pair of identical potato chip packages, one blue and one green.
In the control condition, the two bags were placed on a ‘rock’, and the humans just sat on the parkbench without doing anything interesting.
In the variable condition, the humans pulled a bag of chips from their purse or backpack and ate it. Half ate from a blue bag and half ate from a green bag. The bags on the ‘rock’ were some distance from the humans, and the humans paid no attention to those bags, only to the one bag they pulled and ate.
The gulls didn’t always notice the bags. When they did, they pecked at the same color of bag chosen by the humans 95% of the time. That’s WAY beyond random.
Brand influence makes sense within one species. When I see another person enjoying Brand A, and I view the person as positive or authoritative, I’m more likely to try Brand A.
Between-species influence doesn’t make sense. There’s no reason to think that a bird’s preference should be appetizing to me. When I see a bird grabbing a green caterpillar, I don’t want to eat green caterpillars OR blue caterpillars, and I’m not confused by the contradiction. But the gulls and dogs seem to view humans as higher status, and thus want to copy our choices.
I suppose the answer is a universal version of:
Polistra's Mill 