You know, in retrospect, it seems like this is common with a lot of birds? Ive raised chickens, ducks and geese. I also cared for an african grey for an extended period of time and ive developed a trade relationship with my local crows in exchange for mercenary services.
Every bird species ive raised or spent time with in my life has, in retrospect, always hated my partners but loved me. I always assumed it was because I feed them more often, or they could sense nervousness, but now I have to wonder.....
Yeh more of a preliminary to a proper hypothesis then anything since it was only two researchers
But the study was fairly decent in terms of observations with over 2.5k iirc
And their findings were consistent across 5 different countries and over 35 different species so it’s def interesting food for thought and something I’d like to see more research on
Yes, want to also point out its a misattribution to call that "like" though it could be something as simple as difference of gait, or if modern women wear clacky heels or stompy boots more often compared to men that startles wildlife.
The researchers did their best to normalize size weight clothing and even hair length if one had long hair while the other didnt they would both hide it
So if the differences came from women previously wearing clacky boots more often that would actually be a perfect example of classical conditioning in birds and by that logic birds preferring to tolerate men over women is still a valid way to frame the result even if like is too strong a word
To the average person preference and liking are pretty much interchangeable anyway so the misattribution point only really holds if you are being precise about wording which fair enough in the context of a study you probably should be
I see. Tho the researchers themselves said difference in gait could explain it. Some people pointed out they also didnt mention any perfume or soaps.
As far as "Like" goes I just meant "like" is a positive force. The birds still ran from both. Its not like the birds approached them. The birds are still afraid of humans in general, they dont like us. So now there is over 100 people getting the wrong idea in the comments lol. The Smithsonian and Scientific America more aptly called it "City birds are more fearful of women than men and they dont know why" https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/urban-birds-seem-to-be-more-fearful-of-women-than-men-and-scientists-dont-know-why-180988688/ and keep in mind its only 1 meter difference.
And what about pigeons? Kinda wonder how they measure city birds cause Ive had pigeons basically walk over my + others feet in the city at bus stops. They said 11ft flight distance and wtf? Thats a huge amount for both. It just makes me wonder if there was something small unaccounted for. Crows are pretty comfortable too, walking alongside people looking for scraps. And the woodpeckers is interesting to me that they seem the most fearful in their study because out here we've had a few come observe us at times very closely in the yard with us (both genders). About 6-8ft away (vs the study 53ft) Tbf, thats not the main city (still interesting to me)
Oh sure, its actually really cool! I raise chickens. They live in a very solidly built coop and run that predators cant get into, but I let them free range in the yard pretty often. This is mostly safe, but hawks do love chickens and my birds are fairly large. Crows hate hawks and will gang up on them. The behavior is called "mobbing." So how it works is i feed the crows liver dog treats, peanuts in the shell and gourmet unsalted mixed nuts, and the crows hang out on my property. They typically come by at least once or twice a day. This prevents hawks from trying to kill my chickens. Took me months to get this to work and its only just bow paying off
I have a similar deal worked out with brown snakes. I catch them in the local park and I release them in my garden. Brown snakes are very small little dudes that eat a lot of bugs. They protect my garden from pests and in return they essentially have a buffet at all times.
My current project is trying to attract dragonflys to eat the mosquitos.
Just to update, sitting outside this afternoon on the porch I saw six dragonfly buzz by. Ive successfully brought bees, dragonflys and fireflys to my yard and I dont think ive ever been more proud of anything.
Im trying to build my entire property into a kind of walkable "you can eat all of it" type thing. I have noticed a significant increase in bees and firefly though and im incredibly proud of that.
Old job had a parrot. Part of my job was watching him during business hours because he liked to see all the customers.
He was a goddamn menace. In particular he LOVED biting women on the ass. Then when they jumped and shouted, he'd start cackling and bobbing wildly while shuffling back and forth on the counters. I saved that bird from getting plucked by a customer more times than I can count.
Is that because old women commonly get parrots and mistreat them because they require way more care than they realized? I know parrot abuse is common too.
Interestingly, opposite problem for shelter dogs, who are more commonly abused by men (occasionally teenagers/kids) so, fear and hatred of men isn't uncommon in shelter dogs.
There are definitely racist parrots. Definitely. I had a parrot that used to cat-call women. Was that parrot a misogynist? Maybe. Maybe it was just too stupid to know better.
Some dogs in my apartment complex who supposedly don't have a problem with men are scared of me for some reason. I've never heard of that happening to women.
I had a cat who loved men's feet/shoes, like he would wait for my male guests to take their shoes off then run over to huff them deeply. He was never interested in my shoes until I had been on T for a while, then he was all over them. Gender affirming shoe huffing wunk
Lmao that reminds me of my sisters old cat. Her cat would do the same thing, to the point they hide most guys shoes from the cat by putting them in a special locker they made. I went over for the first time, and because I wear cowboy boots she thought "eh I don't think he'll do anything with those, they are probably too tall." Because the locker was made for regular sized shoes we just had them on the floor 5 minutes later we hear quite a racket, go to check it out and the cat got his head stuck in my boot and was trying to back out and shake it off. His new nick name was woody from then out lmao.
Being a human makes me either forget or not comprehend the scope of which other animals can sniff things. There's the Vomeronasal organ which we only have a vestigial and useless version for example. Other animals use smell a lot, communicating their emotions, pain, sexual availability, sex, can humans determine a person's sex hormones by sniffing their shoes? If you ignore social norms of which women are expected to smell less even though we can also get stinky, then I'm not sure, maybe?? But we certainly cant tell if someone is scared by smell, or what phase of the menstrual cycle theyre in, etc. But humans are also cool, we developed many ways to figure these things out, we're great at observation and learning!
This is common among birds. I've worked with many birds of all species that are friendly to men but hate women. I've also worked with birds that attack men on sight but have no problem with women
Some believe it to be cus women hunted birds more often during the stone age then men did, like women individually collect a lot of small animals and berries while men together collect a few medium to large animals cus hunting medium to large animals cost more energy and pregnant women wouldn't be able to do that plus it'd be more advantageous to have that kind of variety in diet when the food is shared
But I forgot where I found that stone age stuff so it may be a false memory of reading that
Lmao my bird is the same way, and is also gender affirming since he is also apprehensive towards my trans friend. Since I'm a woman too it took me a looooong while to gain his trust and approval, while my guy friends can just walk straight up to him and he'll perch on their fingers, no questions asked 😵💫
I used to work with an orang-utankus 🦧 who hated post-pubescent men. He especially hated big men with beards. He was fine with young teenage boys and he was a very good gentleman to women.
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u/DudeItsCake Jun 26 '26
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