A sense of taste

Hardly any bird species have a sense of smell – and that probably means they have very little sense of taste either. That knowledge has been used to great effect to stop squirrels stealing wild bird food by adding a few chilli seeds to the mix. The birds carry on happily eating, completely oblivious, whilst the Squirrels run as fast as they can to put their heads in a bucket of water.

The Fulmar is an exception to this as they apparently have a keen sense of smell and use it to detect fish oil when feeding. I don’t know about chillies though.

Fulmar at Noup - photograph (c) 2016 David Bailey (not the)

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