9 ms·
Geese return twice as quickly if you try to shoo them away
- bitxbitxbitcoin 4y agoInterested in the state on shooting away rather than shooing.
- taneq 4y agoYou wouldn't be shooing them away if there wasn't something there to shoo them away from. It's just logical.
- andrew_ 4y agoIn Michigan we'd use a potato gun (for the noise) to scare them off, as well as very low velocity bb guns (hit the foot of one, they alarm and the flock leaves). The ultimate device to keep those poop machines away was my Australian Shepherd - sending her out to chase kept them away for a day+
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- thesaintlives 4y agoGreat. You know exactly where to shoot them..
- helsinkiandrew 4y ago>Geese chased out of a park in Chicago returned to the area twice as quickly on days when they were harassed, compared with days when they left of their own accord Because the reason they left was no longer valid, whereas when they left of their own accord presumably the reason was still valid (had eaten all the food, bad nesting, noise etc)
- barbegal 4y agoExactly as the paper author explains in this article https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/972608 https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/972608
- bentobean 4y agoPerhaps. On the other hand, I choose to believe the geese return out of spite.
- rqtwteye 4y agoI am not sure about geese but crows definitely do things out of spite.
- quitit 4y agoPeace was never an option. -UGG
- Pigalowda 4y agoIndeed. It is important to leave as much poop on the walking paths as they can. Dropping density correlating directly with amount of food resources extracted also nicely correlates with spite. It’s good to maximize both before moving on to victimize the next territory and path.
- 0xdeadfa65 4y agoThank you for the laugh. I’m not convinced though that this is not their though process.
- dwhitney 4y agoThis is the first time I’ve seen humor on this site. If I were you, I’d be afraid
- xwdv 4y agoHe won’t last very long here.
- MiguelX413 4y ago
- aliqot 4y agoEvery time Reddit alienates the top 5%, part of them flow here still peddling the memes and vestiges of the old dominion. Over time this sheds as they're welcomed into the fold, and we get a bit less staunch. We accept you, one of us, one of us
- swayvil 4y agoEach goose thought, "ah, the flock has been cleared out. Now the field is all easy pickings. I will be clever one and return alone to reap a fat feast!"
- yborg 4y ago>The giant Canada goose subspecies was believed to be extinct in the 1950s until, in 1962, a small flock was discovered wintering in Rochester, Minnesota, by Harold Hanson of the Illinois Natural History Survey. No good deed ever goes unpunished.
- zoklet-enjoyer 4y agoGeese love Rochester https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-minnesota-towns-love-hate-relationship-with-giant-geese https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-minnesota-towns-love...
- 323 4y agoMaybe they should open a restaurant nearby. Source your food locally...
- Kaibeezy 4y agoCanada geese have a mild flavor that results in good eating; done properly, it resembles lean beef in texture. https://www.themeateater.com/hunt/geese/a-species-profile-on-the-canada-goose https://www.themeateater.com/hunt/geese/a-species-profile-on...
- DSingularity 4y agoIs it legal to hunt them ?
- JimtheCoder 4y agoYes, during hunting season. But no, not in the park, by the playground, near the kids...
- orthoxerox 4y agoThe kids should know where the food on their tables comes from.
- vxNsr 4y agoI fully agree with this. I’ve personally often thought about starting a summer camp that is basically just farm work for kids, have them raise chickens, goats, etc and at the end of the summer there’s a big feast… but the kids also participate in the slaughter so there’s no doubt in their mind where food comes from.
- knicholes 4y agoYou can call it Dahmer Factory.
- jwilk 4y agoAny work-arounds for the paywall?
- rzzzt 4y agoThe U of I's own article has more details: https://aces.illinois.edu/news/study-canada-geese-beat-humans-longstanding-territory-battle https://aces.illinois.edu/news/study-canada-geese-beat-human...
- Kaibeezy 4y agohttps://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wsb.1384 https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ws... HN guidelines ask for links to the original article rather than a news summary. This is a perfect example of why.
- the_common_man 4y agoWhile parks and ponds are unusable because of geese poo. I love animals so i am not sure what to make of this
- paganel 4y agoThat we should probably learn to live with geese poo. We have a problem with crows poo in the city where I live, but I’d take that one thousand times over not having any crows at all, or geese, for that matter. Pigeons are a little different because they’re mostly city-wide pets as things stand right now, they don’t seem to fill any “needed” ecological niche, but I may be wrong on that.
- krisoft 4y ago> Pigeons are a little different because they’re mostly city-wide pets as things stand right now, they don’t seem to fill any “needed” ecological niche, but I may be wrong on that. What is “needed”? How do you even define that? (And are you filling a “needed exological niche”?)
- paganel 4y agoThat’s why I used quotes. Supposedly crows around these parts eat mice and even rats, which is good enough reason for me to define it as filling a “needed ecological niche”.
- jwilk 4y ago> city-wide pets Did you mean "pests"?
- paganel 4y agoGoes both ways. I do have a lady close to me that treats them as pets, meaning she feeds them regularly. Some small kids also play with them, more exactly running after them, the same way as they’d play with dogs, let’s say.
- 4y ago
- gumboza 4y agoGeese are easily startled, but they'll soon be back, and in greater numbers.
- hamilton987 4y ago[dead]
- gpderetta 4y agoOnly the sand geese though.
- graderjs 4y ago
- MacsHeadroom 4y agoFor anyone unsure, it's a Star Wars reference (Sand People).
- louthy 4y agoOnly ChatGPT is unsure
- olliej 4y agoThis headline is clearly tailored to make it seem like spite or whatever, but it is clear _after_ the headline: if you shoo them away from where they want to be they come back, whereas if they no longer want to be there and leave they don't come back. This is like saying "people come back to their homes when I random set off their fire alarm at a much higher rate than when they decide to sell their home and buy a new house somewhere else".
- the_sleaze9 4y agotruly hilarious
- amelius 4y agoAirports use lasers and pyrotechnics to get rid of them. https://www.birdcontrolgroup.com/chasing-away-the-geese-at-dundee-airport/ https://www.birdcontrolgroup.com/chasing-away-the-geese-at-d...
- BuildTheRobots 4y agoAnd mass culling. After AWE1549 landed on the Hudson river 70,000 birds were killed around New York to try and stop it happening again.
- zoklet-enjoyer 4y agoWho would ever guess that there would be a massive amount of birds near a river?
- jmclnx 4y agoWhere I live, Canadian Geese were here all over the place, pooping everywhere. Then 2 year-round swans moved in, the geese disappeared and have not been back. Seems they hate each other.
- rqtwteye 4y agoSwans are also mean. You don't want to mess with one.
- frosted-flakes 4y agoCanada geese, not Canadian.
- fargle 4y agoHow do we know the geese the OP speak of were not Canadian? Could be Canada Geese from Canada which would then properly be Canadian Canada Geese. Could be any other species of Goose from Canada which would still be Canadian Geese, but just not Canadian Canada Geese (or is that Canadian non-Canada Geese?). If you want to pedantically split hairs, why stop 1/2 way. We need a xkcd style venn diagram here.
- pridkett 4y agoThis is a great solution. But it’s a rough one for people to comprehend. I live in a small town with a lake and a popular local swimming beach. During the summer parking is $25/car. When the geese end up closing the beach due to their excrement raising harmful bacteria levels, the town loses that revenue. In addition, the park by the lake hosts after school programs and the amount of goose feces on the ground can become biblical in scale. Being an engineer and scientist I ran the numbers. The town could purchase a pair of swans for $1200 each weekend and come out ahead. Eventually a pair would stick around, right? I still find it amusing that a few people think the geese are pretty or that we should do things to attract them. Nope. Just very angry birds that are over populated and a health risk.
- JimtheCoder 4y agoCanadian Geese are notoriously insecure - everyone wants to take pictures of pretty swans, but no one wants to look at the crazy geese, standing in their own feces and hissing at each other. They can't handle the emotional trauma, so they leave... It's sad, really...
- jcampbell1 4y agoThe best way to deal with Canadian geese is an unneutered off-leash lab around a year old.
- ck2 4y agoThings I have learned in life that were not obvious include "do not mess with geese" (or crows). They are way smarter and more aggressive than you might ever imagine. There's a reason why they use geese as "watchdogs"
- jwie 4y agoAn excellent case study on data being pointless. The title might as well be “Geese want to be where humans don’t want them to be, probably for food or habitat reasons.” They’re not twice as likely to return if shooed away. They want to be in certain places because they instinctively know it’s a good spot for resources so they’ll keep trying. The shooing had little to do with them returning or not.
- enkid 4y agoThe data is poorly worded, but it does give insight into the fact that shooting isn't as effective as a goose deterrent
- epgui 4y agoCan confirm, these birds are the least polite Canadians I know.