Is it a poop de ville?
Humans aren’t the only ones with brand loyalty when it comes to automobiles. A recent study found that our fine-feathered friends prefer certain types and colors of vehicles for pooping — with brown vehicles and Ram trucks topping the list of favorite on-the-fly toilets.
“Car owners often debate whether certain makes or colors are more vulnerable to bird mess, and the data from our survey suggests they may be right,” wrote garage and carport retailer Alan’s Factory Outlet, which conducted the odiferous survey.
To shed light on this “messy but relatable problem,” the carpark purveyors surveyed 1,000 vehicle owners on whether their whip was a mobile manure magnet.
They then combined their responses with research on bird behavior and parking habits.
Having one’s car isn’t some trivial issue, either — the study found that nearly 1 in 4 Americans spend over $500 per year on repairs and car washes due to bird droppings, while 1 in 10 said they sustained paint damage from an aerial “bombing” run.
According to the results, birds definitely see color when it comes to pooping with brown, red and black vehicles getting splattered the most from above, while lighter “colors like white and silver/gray ranked lower” when it came to getting a “second coat.”
Alan’s Factory Outlet attributed this pigmental preference in part to the fact that “birds perceive color differently from humans and have the ability to detect ultraviolet (UV) light.”
“This heightened vision makes certain car colors stand out more in their environment,” they write. “Studies show these shades are especially eye-catching, which may explain why they often seem like prime targets.”
In addition, shiny surfaces and side mirrors can reflect bird’s own image back at them, which, during mating season can cause them to mistake themselves for a rival and attack their own reflection repeatedly.
The more time they spend around said cars, the more likely they are to paint them white.
The only caveat is that the results were self-reported, meaning that “white, silver, and gray cars might be seeing some under-reporting simply because bird mess doesn’t show up quite as easily,” the experts at Carbuzz theorized.
As for favorite brands, the survey discovered that these winged terrors prefer doing their number twos on Ram, Jeep, and Chevrolet. Other targeted models included Nissan, Dodge, and Kia, while Tesla, Audi, and Subaru were excluded. Meanwhile, “both domestic and imported brands are at risk,” per the survey.
Top ten most pooped-on brands
- Ram
- Jeep
- Chevrolet
- Nissan
- Dodge
- Kia
- Tesla
- Audi
- Ford
- Subaru
It’s yet unclear why these soaring scat machines prefer these brands, but the experts at Carbuzz noted that the top choices tended to be pickup trucks, “which are bigger, meaning more surface area to poop on.”
Unfortunately, the scourge isn’t limited to certain brands. According to the survey, over “half of Americans (58%) said their car had been pooped on more than once in the same day.”
And, in a scenario seemingly taken from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 thriller “The Birds,” 29% of Americans felt that birds had targeted their car, with Lexus drivers feeling the most personally attacked (47%), followed by Tesla owners at 39%.
They might not be exaggerating, unfortunately. Crows can hold a grudge against individual people for up to 17 year,s while a study in Paris showed that pigeons had a surprising knack for remembering both friend and foe based on prior experiences.
One of the flying rats reportedly followed a scientist who had fed them, and avoided another who had chased them, even after the two researchers switched lab coats.
Fortunately, motorists can mitigate the likelihood of their vehicles getting a bird poop bath by parking in covered areas when possible, using car covers if they expect long-term outdoor parking, and avoiding leaving your car under trees, wires, or ledges where birds frequently roost.
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