I was watching some gulls fighting last weekend. The fight went on for more than 15 minutes and moved from the top of a boat, to a dock, to the water. And all the time the birds were grappling at each others' beaks. A picture is included below. I was wondering if the bird behaviorists in the crowd might be able to tell me what they were likely fighting over. I didn't see any food nearby and its not breeding season.
Interestingly, about 30 minutes later, at a nearby location, I saw what I presume is one of the gulls (it was soaking wet and had scratches and missing feathers around its jaw) standing on a post, when two juvenile birds flew in and attacked it.
I would think its possible they're fighting just for the sake of fighting. Look at us humans, it happens
all of the time, fighting for no reason. I would figure why not birds?
Why not fight? The answer is straightforward- fighting costs energy and can be dangerous. Natural selection favours behaviours that benefit more than they cost. Gulls are long-lived animals and will not trade off short term gain (e.g., a fight) if it costs them down the road in terms of lifetime reproductive success. For a predator such as a gull, losing an eye in a fight would perhaps result in a slow decline to death caused by reduced ability to find and capture prey. Ultimately this is the reason fights in the animal kingdom seldom result in death- fighting animals tend to hold back and it is more for show than to maim or kill your opponent. Having said all this, animals make mistakes and don't always follow evolutionary rules of thumb. That's what might have happened in this case. Hard to say why they were fighting to begin with. You'd have to get into the puny mind of a gull to discover that one!
Thanks for your thoughts, John. It was weird that this was such an aggressive and continuous fight. And then a while later to see one of the birds attacked (while it was looking away, actually) made me think there must be a reason this guy seemed to have a target on his back!
Gull Behavior
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