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 feeding from the hand of a human. These associations were also supported after control for the similarity among taxa due to common phylogenetic descent. In conclusion, these findings suggest that frequent feeding from the hand of a human results in the transition from natural environments to novel urbanized environments with consequences for population size increasing and range expansion.
Highlights
Regression Models. *These variables were log10-transformed in the model. +Phylogenetic signal was measured as the scalar magnitude of the phylogenetic variance-covariance matrix
Information of at least one ecological variable (Number of Innovations, Introduction Success, Flight Initiation Distance, Breeding Range, Population Size, Urban Tolerance) was collected for these 36 species, and for all 490 other European bird species which were not recorded as feeding from a human hand
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 feeding from the hand of a human (Table 1, Supplementary Fig. 1)
Summary
The objectives of this study were to test a number of associations derived from animal responses to human attempts to feed birds from the hand
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