8-Year-Old’s Viral Survey Finds That Bald Men Are More Likely to Get Attacked by Magpies

After an 8-year-old Australian girl noticed several people getting swooped at by her school’s resident magpie, she decided to research their behavior. The survey she created has since gone viral, helping her to discover that bald men are more likely to get attacked than those with long hair.

Emma Glenfield keeps a journal full of questions to help her think about the world. She came up with her latest question when she noticed a magpie near her school, known as Mr. Swoopsalot, attacking and scaring students, teachers, and parents: “Why do magpies swoop?”

"He's been coming to school for a long time, and he's been swooping all the dads," Glenfield told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). "I noticed that, and I wondered why. Who do they swoop, where do they target?"

She told her teacher, Luke Carr, about her question, who encouraged her to turn it into a math project.

"I watched the people he swooped, and I recorded it," Glenfield told ABC. "Then I got everything I recorded, and I figured out that they [the people Mr. Swoopsalot swooped] were male, they were tall, and they had thin or receding hair."

Following her observations, Glenfield created a survey with the help of her mom and handed out flyers with the survey’s QR code to students, teachers, and strangers at the local park.

In the survey, the 8-year-old asked participants how old they were, how tall, their hairstyle, how much they weighed, and if they were hurt as a result of the swooping.

At first, Glenfield was excited to learn that 150 people had taken her survey. But a few days later, Carr said that Glenfield’s mom told him that the survey ended up going viral after someone posted it on Reddit, and more than 30,000 people had submitted responses.

Now equipped with experiences from around the world, Glenfield was able to determine that people with no hair or “thin hair” were twice as likely to be attacked by magpies. Additionally, those six feet or taller are twice as likely to be targeted by the birds, as reported by Daily Mail Australia.

Magpie expert Darryl Jones, professor emeritus at Griffith University, told ABC that this survey is the first time anyone has examined the link between a person’s appearance and magpie swooping.

Glenfield went on to submit her research to the NSW Investigating With Mathematics competition and the National Math Talent Quest and won first place in both for her age group.