If you see a stork carrying a bag home you can’t just assume anymore that it’s a family being blessed with a newborn, according to the experts at the University of East Anglia. It could well be a take-out order:

• Instead of heading over to countries in Africa from Spain and Portugal for the winter, storks have decided to stay put.
• They do this because they’ve discovered the wonders of junk food. They now just raid open landfill sites for food rather than make the arduous journey south.
• Storks now invest in finding prime nest building spots which they defend year-round.
• The convenience maybe responsible for the explosion in the population of the species – in the past 20 years their numbers have grown 10-fold.
• Alas they may pay a price for their laziness. EU directives will soon require open land-fill sites to be shut down. Hopefully the birds haven’t entirely forgotten how to make it south to find food.

Read more about the study here.

Source: Phys

Via: Marginal Revolution