For many Brits, there's nothing better than fish and chips by the seaside — and nothing worse than trying to keep seagulls away from them! Happily, however, researchers in the UK have found the best way to get them to go away is simply by shouting. The researchers put chips in plastic boxes in towns across the southwest coast of England and tested how 61 European herring gulls reacted to recordings of a robin's song, a male voice saying, "No, stay away, that's my food," and a voice shouting those words. Previous research had shown that gulls could be kept away by approaching them, making eye contact with them or shouting at them. But the new study, published in Biology Letters, wanted to measure the difference between speaking and shouting if both were played at the same volume. The birds reacted to the sound of the speaking voice and showed signs of vigilance, pecking less on the food and leaving sooner than when they heard the birdsong, the study found. They tended to walk away from the speaking voice, but flew away from the shouting, suggesting they could tell the difference between the two. "Normally when someone is shouting, it's scary because it's a loud noise, but in this case all the noises were the same volume," study author Neeltje Boogert said. "So it seems that gulls pay attention to the way we say things, which we don't think has been seen before in any wild species." The study was designed to show that people don't need to be violent towards seagulls, which are a species of conservation concern in the UK, to frighten them. The voices of males were used because men commit the most crimes against wildlife. The researchers said that further studies could determine if there's a different reaction to female voices.