The ecological significance of birds feeding from the hand of humans.

ABSTRACT: Animals keep a safe distance to humans and thus humans rarely physically encounter wild animals. However, birds have been known to feed from the hand of humans. Such behaviour must reflect the trade-off between acquisition of food and the risk of being captured by a potential predator feeding from the hand. Relying on YouTube, an international video-sharing platform, we found 36 European bird species recorded feeding from the hand of humans. We compared ecological traits between these species and all other 490 European bird species, which were not recorded as feeding from a human hand. We found that species with a large number of innovative behaviours, a higher rate of introduction success, larger breeding range, larger population size, and urban tolerance have a higher probability of feed

SUBMITTER: Moller AP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7300022 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature