Don't get mad the next time a gull tries to steal your french fry, they're just following tradition. Paul Haemig, a Swedish animal ecologist visited 80 cafes and restaurants and recorded bird behavior. From a New Scientist article:

Haemig thinks that foraging where humans are present is a behaviour that evolved several times. And he believes that, in the principal clade to which these birds belong, the behaviour evolved earlier than humans did – because the species in this clade separated genetically before humans emerged.

“Their ancestors hung out around our ancestors,” he says. “It looks suspiciously like a very old association.”

He points to nearly 60 known foraging relationships between birds and other creatures, from army ants to aardvarks and whales to warthogs. So just as, on a frosty morning, a robin swoops for worms turned over by a gardener’s fork or, in the Congo marshes, birds pick up frogs flushed out by gorillas, the savvy birds of urbanised areas are foraging for mozzarella panini and chips at your table...

Restaurants may even have a role in conservation, Haemig says. In rural restaurants, the three predominant species he saw were declining in numbers in the countryside: house sparrows, white wagtails and Eurasian tree sparrows. This suggests that rural restaurants could become part of the plan for conserving them.

Read the entire piece here.