European Great Tits and 36 other
bird species on the continent are more afraid of women than they are of men, according to a
recent study—and researchers have no idea why.
In the study, men could get about a meter closer to
birds than women could before the animals flew away, according to the results. This pattern remained regardless of what the men and women were wearing, what their height was or how they tried to approach the creatures. That suggests birds may be able to suss out the sex of a human, though the researchers aren’t sure how.
“I fully believe our results, that urban birds react differently based on the sex of the person approaching them, but I can’t explain them right now,” said Daniel
Blumstein, a co-author of the study and a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, in a
statement.
The researchers looked at birds living in urban centers in five European countries. They included birds that are known to flee as soon as a human approaches, such as magpies, and those that tend to flap off later, such as pigeons. The outsize fear response to women was consistent across the species.
In the paper, the team hypothesized that birds may be sensing chemical signals, such as pheromones, or using cues such as body shape to recognize a person’s sex. But more research is needed before they can come to any conclusions.
