Seoul National University researchers have found that Magpies think and react faster when they're being observed by humans or any other predator.
Magpies are known to be intelligent birds from the corvidae family. Providing a glimpse of their intelligence, researchers from Seoul National University have found that these birds tend to think and react faster when they're being observed by humans or any other predators in general.
"We started this study from our experience" says Dr. Sang-im Lee, the leader of magpie research team and the first author of the paper. "For a long time we had this impression that somehow magpies know that we are watching them because they often fly away from us when we observe them. But when we don't observe them, we can pass them pretty close-by but they don't fly away!"
Previous studies have found that animals are aware of human gaze. Usually animals use gaze of the conspecifics in social contexts and therefore pet animals pay attention to the gaze of humans who are known as their social mates. Animals such as birds, lizards and deer often escape from humans at larger distances when they become aware of the human gaze as it sends a signal to them that the predator wants to catch them. Similarly, Magpies at the Seoul National University were found to fly away to safer territories when anyone looked directly at them.
What caught the researchers' fascination was not the fact that the magpies were aware of the human gaze but at how fast they made the decision on whether to fly away or continue sitting where they were. They were also faster than other animals in analyzing the level of danger approaching them when they were in direct sight. Similarly, the decision to fly away or stay put was slower in magpies when no one was looking at them. The authors of the study state that this instinct could be the reason for its long survival in such close proximity with humans for centuries now.
The study was published online in PLOS One
