Humans aren’t the only animals that are superstitious, it turns out that birds (and other animals) are too.

“Superstition” definition from Merriam-Webster: A false conception of causation.

For example, a baseball player hits a home run, notices that he’s wearing a particular pair of underwear, and decides that the underwear was the cause of the win, it becomes his ‘lucky charm’. He then goes on to wear the same underwear to every game (without washing it) and believes that the underwear gives him good luck even though he doesn’t continue to win every game.

Birds also exhibit this behaviour. Experiments have been done where birds have been given food during a certain activity that the bird undertook. The bird repeats the action that it thinks resulted in the reward, but is now just as likely to be rewarded with food whether he does that certain behaviour or any other. Somehow it’s kind of comforting to know that we’re not the only ones that do silly things like avoiding crossing a black cat’s path, throwing salt over our shoulder, or praying to imaginary spirits in the sky.