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Researchers have up with a useful tactic to seagulls from stealing your picnic sandwiches or making a grab for your French fries. The advice is to at the birds to any food theft. This invaluable tip comes from a study from the University of Exeter in the UK. Researchers tests at a beach on the effects of staring at the sea birds. They a bag of fries on the ground and how long it took gulls to approach and the fries without a researcher looking at the birds. They then out the same test, but this time a researcher made eye contact as a bird . The birds took an extra 21 seconds to approach the food when a researcher stared at them.

The researchers that the seagulls were deterred by the human gaze. Only 26 per cent of the birds made an attempt to the researchers' food with the eye contact. Three-quarters of the birds just still and looked at the food or away. Lead researcher Madeleine Goumas said: "I noticed that gulls seemed to have a bad reputation for food-snatching, but I it happen quite rarely. When I did it happen, gulls often in from behind, and the people completely oblivious. Gulls are often as aggressive and willing to take food from humans, so it was interesting to find that most wouldn't even near during our tests."