Scientific trick to stop seagulls stealing your hot chips and ice cream

Ecologists have shared the trick to stop seagulls from stealing your food. Photo / Getty Images

Staring at seagulls is the best way to stop them stealing your chips or ice cream, ecologists have shown.

Britain's herring gulls are often viewed as aggressive, and have been photographed snatching rabbits and even pet dogs.

But experiments by academics at the University of Exeter in the UK have found that the birds are surprisingly easy to intimidate, and will back off from a meal if they think someone is watching.

Researchers put a bag of chips on the ground in Cornish seaside resorts and tested how long it took herring gulls to approach when a human was watching them, compared to when the human looked away.

Researchers put a bag of chips on the ground and tested how long it took for gulls to approach. Photo / Getty Images

On average the gulls took 21 seconds longer to approach the food when being watched.

Out of 74 gulls that the researchers attempted to test, just 27 would go anywhere near the food when a person was present, while just 19 completed the "looking at" and "looking away" tests.

"Gulls are often seen as aggressive, so it was interesting to find that most wouldn't even come near during our tests," said lead author Madeleine Goumas, of the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at Exeter's Penryn Campus in Cornwall.

"Of those that did approach, most took longer when they were being watched."The research was published in the journal Biology Letters.