We just scared some birds away.
[Faye] Think they're close to the silver hood.
-Okay, we got some more action over here. -Look at this.
[Tory] We got one, two,
three, four, five, six.
-[Bisi] Oh, wow. -[Faye] Okay, all right.
[Bisi] Oh, they love this white one.
You know what's cool about this
is we're actually getting
-some data. -[Faye] Oh, yeah.
I mean, this is our control. We've lured them here, on purpose.
And they have the ability to poop anywhere they desire.
-All right. -And it's sort of even.
Looks like you got a lot of hit.
-Yeah, we got a lot over here. -We're gonna be here a while.
[opening theme music playing]
-Yes! -Yeah!
[narrator] Meet the team.
[whooping]
There's a potential that I could get electrocuted.
[explosion]
[narrator] With the mechanical expertise...
More oxygen, more fuel. That makes more power.
[narrator] to test all things automotive.
[Bisi] It's almost like surgery.
If I make a mistake we'll blow up the engine.
[narrator] This is Motor MythBusters...
[Faye] This is our job!
[narrator] where science
meets the streets.
[bird squawking]
So, if there's anything that I'm really very well known for,
other than my love of Supras,
um, is my love of birds.
I'm a total crazy chicken lady.
I have six chickens at home.
So, I'm not just driving around with these birds for fun.
I actually have a myth planned for these guys.
Hey, guys.
-Check out my birds. -Hey.
-What? -Oh!
-Oh, my gosh. -Aren't they adorable?
-[Tory] Are they lovebirds? -[Faye] They are.
[Tory] They look like they're in love.
Well, I think that the shop needed some pets.
-They are so beautiful. -[Faye laughing]
-They look unreal. -No, no, no.
Actually, I have a myth for you guys.
There's a study done out of the UK that shows
that birds tend to poop on red cars most.
I don't believe that at all.
I've heard that people who drive red cars get more tickets,
but I've never heard birds poop more on red cars.
Where does this data come from?
So, in the study, over eleven hundred cars participated,
five different cities, over a period of two days.
And, of the cars that were pooped on,
eighteen percent of the red cars got pooped on.
Yeah.
Fourteen percent of the blue cars got pooped on,
eleven percent of the black cars got pooped on,
seven percent of the white cars got pooped on
and a three percent of the silverish,
greyish cars got pooped on.
So, who came up with this study?
-Yeah. -That's the problem.
It was a self-reported study.
So, they called people and asked them,
how often birds pooped on their cars
and then what color cars they had.
So, what's the myth here?
That birds defecate more on red cars
-than anything else? Oh. -Exactly.
You know though, before we go any further
maybe we should come up with an experiment ourselves
to see what color birds poop on more.
You know, I concur.
We have to find a place where we can have a variety of cars
with lots of different colors.
-Maybe a car lot. -That works.
[Bisi] At least that may give us
some preliminary data on bird pooping habits.
Well, I already, kind of,
partially started this test on my own
and, uh, my blue car, got crapped on this morning.
-Huh. -Huh.
[Tory] We're down here looking at used cars
'cause I'm gonna buy a used car.
No. Actually, Bisi and I thought it might be a good idea
to come to a place where cars have been parked for a while.
We're gonna look at different colors of cars,
see if birds have pooped on them,
and take our data.
Now I know what you're thinking
car lots always wash their cars every day.
But, we talked to the owners and they've agreed
to not wash the cars until we're done with our experiment.
So, here's a yellow car,
tiny little bit of poop.
I don't see any on this guy.
-Do you? -[Bisi] Nah.
[gasps]
-Hey, look at that. -There is one.
Nice runny one, too.
That's... [laughs]
[narrator] So, why this car lot?
Well, the collection of various colored vehicles
will provide Tory and Bisi
with ideas on how to conduct their own experiment.
Like, how and where to place the targets
to determine accurate defecation data.
[Tory] I mean, the myth is all about
red cars getting pooped on more, right?
So, theoretically,
this car should be covered in bird poop
and it's not.
Okay, there is a tiny little bit of bird poop.
[Bisi] That's true.
-So, mark that one down. -[Bisi] Yeah.
Hey. [chuckles]
-[Bisi] Oh. -This one,
-[laughs] has got nailed. -That one has a lot.
[Bisi] But it's under a tree.
[Tory] I know.
-Okay, well, great truck, -Yep.
destroyed.
Birds destroyed it.
You know, this may not have good evidence for us
because we don't know if there's an influence
of having a place to perch on defecation happening.
I mean, I, uh, hundred percent agree
that no matter what color the car is
if you put something to perch over it
the birds are gonna poop on that car more than the others.
You know, what's interesting as we analyze
what we observed here on the lot.
We had more white cars here on the lot than any other vehicle.
-[Tory] Right. -Nineteen.
[Bisi] And three had matter.
-About 15 percent. -[Tory] Fifteen percent.
[Bisi] Which is pretty interesting.
[Tory] And the red,
the fact that there's only four cars
and half of them
-got crapped on. -[Bisi] Yeah. Mm-hm.
So, you're saying that there's some plausibility to this myth.
-It's quite possible. -This is interesting.
[Bisi] The findings Tory and I got
gave this myth some validation.
[narrator] Meanwhile, Faye is getting
the lowdown from an ornithologist
on exactly how birds see colors.
[Faye] Hi. Oh, my gosh.
I'm so glad you could come here today.
Because I have [exhales] this very pressing question
-I'm trying to figure out. -Okay.
Do birds poop more
on [clicks tongue] red cars?
What you think about this?
In all honesty, I'm a little skeptical
-of the myth. You know? -Okay.
-So, birds are attracted to certain colors. -It's all right.
-Okay. -So, that is true.
Birds actually see more colors.
We're actually missing
colors that birds can see.
So, as humans, we have three cones in our eyes.
And these cones are basically what perceives light
and sends that signal to our brain that we turn into color.
But birds, they have another cone in the UV space.
And so, birds actually have
a whole nother dimension of color that we can't see.
Whoa. All right.
I see you brought like, all this equipment.
What is this?
So this is, um, some of the equipment that I use
to measure bird color,
called reflectance spectrophotometer.
Light goes through this box,
through the fiber optic cable. I point it at something,
I mean, usually I'm pointing it at bird feathers.
We're actually gonna see how is light reflecting off of these feathers.
And then, I can actually put that
through a model of avian vision.
-Okay, so, this is car paint. -Yeah.
-Let's see how it looks on our little -Yeah.
-reflectance-- -[Allison] Spectrophotometer.
Let's start with black which is pretty much a flat curve
'cause, you know, black doesn't really have color.
This is showing me all the stuff that i can't see
that other birds can see.
[Allison] That's right. I'm curious about this purple.
Me too. Wow. I'm seeing quite a bit in the range that I can't see.
[Allison] Yeah. So, there's definitely
-some UV color in this purple. -A lot of action.
[Faye] Okay.
[Allison] Silver, though,
is kind of, highly reflective across the board.
And, you know, this is gonna be very mirror-like.
So, the more mirror-like a car is,
that is definitely gonna attract birds.
Especially, you know, certain times of year
when the males are trying to like, fight off the other males.
They're gonna try and get that male away.
-Really? -I would.
'Cause this one ranked the lowest
in the, in the study. Fascinating.
Red, yeah, this red has very little UV.
But, some birds are attractive to red,
typically, birds that feed on things like flowers and berries.
Given everything that we've just
-been talking about, -Yeah.
what are the birds I'm gonna find around this area
that are most prevalent and also, um, poop the most?
[Allison] One of them is this Western Gull.
So, you see a lot of them at the beach
-but also in parking lots and things like that. -Mm-hm.
We've got this, we call them rock pigeon as their official name
that you see in the park.
We have American crow
and then this guy over here is an European starling.
These love sitting on, like, telephone wires.
So, you can imagine that these are gonna be over cars quite a lot.
Absolutely. Telephone wires.
All right. With all this information
that you presented me with, if you were to guess
which one of these colors they might poop on the most.
My guess is gonna be it's more about the reflection
than about being attracted to one particular color versus another.
You know, think about like,
a puppy seeing itself in the mirror
-and trying to play with it. -Interesting.
So, you think that for the sake of the study
can birds actually, like,
control when they, you know, poop?
They definitely do have some control, you know.
They don't wanna poop in their nest.
You don't wanna poop in your house, right?
-Yeah. -And they poop to defend themselves
against other predators or things like that.
But, you know, one thing, difference
between our poop and bird poop is only one thing.
There's no separate pee and poop.
It's all mixed in.
Their poop is, is pretty acidic.
This is something that should be of concern for car paint.
Well, thank you so much for your time.
I feel like I learned how I'm gonna set up the study.
Glad to do it.
[Faye] I just learned a ton about how birds see light and color.
I've gotta go digest this and really figure out a way with the team
to set up the study in a way that's actually gonna be effective.
That is good.
-All right, boys. What do you got going on? -Hey.
-I like your drawing. -Thank you.
It is interesting. What--
I wanted to get the point across.
Something emanating from the rear.
-That's poop. Yeah. -Oh.
Thinking of crap.
I think we need to come up with our own test
to see whether or not this data's true.
Yeah. We're gonna have to. This is all on us.
I think we should probably find a part of a vehicle
that has the most real estate.
-Like a hood. -Like a hood.
Hm. Whole bunch of hoods.
Yeah, we get a bunch of hoods and then paint them different colors.
Well, but wait, okay.
First of all, we gotta figure out how many colors we need.
Second of all, we have to figure out
how the heck do we get any birds to this area to begin with.
Right, so the study was red, blue, white,
-Green. -black, silver.
I say we can go further, make a couple of them just wild.
Maybe camo on one.
I'm all about the camo.
-Rainbow, I like that. -Rainbow.
All right. So, just in case,
[softly] they don't care at all.
-That's true. -Can I throw in purple?
'Cause purple's my favorite color.
-Purple. Throw in purple. -Yeah, okay.
We're gonna get 11 hoods.
-Eleven hoods, okay. -[Faye] Yep.
-All right. -And how do we space these out
so that they could give us some decent data?
What if we just lay them out on a grid?
-Hm. -Ah.
How much space do we want in between?
I mean, do we, like, four to six feet?
-'Cause I feel like... -Yeah.
It's gotta be something.
-It's a worthy and substantial space. -Okay.
-Yeah. -Yes. So, how far up
are we gonna putting our "telephone poles."
-Uh, I would say, -"Telephone wires."
maybe we do like, six feet above.
Oh, that's pretty decent.
-Right, so it's not too high, it's not too low. -Right.
[Bisi] Maybe a couple across each.
Yeah, where they wanna land and poop.
And then maybe we could put some line above
-each of the hoods. -I like that.
So, they can defecate in comfort.
And then they can land.
-They have a place to land. -Yeah, of course.
-This is such a ridiculous experiment. -I know.
-But I'm-- -So much thought into it.
We're thinking really hard about this.
We're really excited about this one.
[machine whirring]
All right. We have our plan now for the bird poop experiment.
Now, Bisi and Faye are working on the hoods.
I need to build some telephone lines.
Because we have our hoods so close together,
we're not gonna be able to find telephone poles that close.
So, I need to make my own and then this
will give the birds something to land on.
And then we'll be able to see
which color they prefer to poop on.
[narrator] So next they have to prep
and paint a bunch of colored poop landing pads
for their feathered friends.
[Bisi] I'm about to sand this hood with 220 grit
sandpaper on this beautiful wheel
using compressed air as my accomplice.
And the reason why I'm doing this
is to get the paint to adhere to the hood.
[Faye] I'm not gonna paint my hood.
I'm gonna vinyl wrap it in camo.
Oh, I'm not good at this. [laughs]
And, this hood is done.
We've got 11 hoods, all freshly painted
and ready to be thrown to the birds.
[eagle screeching]
[Bisi] So, now we have this great lot.
It's very conducive for what we're trying to do.
I think we should
place cinder blocks on the ground first.
-Mm-hm. Yeah. -Then the hood,
secure the hoods to those blocks,
and on each end put those crazy devices
-that Tory built. -[Faye laughs]
Wind some wire across and we should be good.
So, what do you say we just
-put them out randomly. -Yeah.
And then, we're not favoring
one color over another.
-Sounds good. -All right.
[Faye] So, as you can see behind me
we're almost done laying out the hoods.
We have one more left to go.
Then we're gonna put out all this amazing bird food
and string up our "power lines."
And I'm pretty stoked. I'm feeling pretty positive about this.
Already we are seeing and hearing
all sorts of birds in the area.
And I think that they cannot wait for us to put out our food
and come feast.
And, um, lay some waste.
I'm pretty excited!
[Faye] So, we're spreading around these mealworms
because these are gonna lure in
the most common types of birds in Southern California,
crows and pigeons.
And, we're near the beach, so there's gonna be tons of seagulls.
[Bisi] You're right.
-Oh, the smell. -[Faye] Ew!
[Faye] Are we to find 18 pieces of crap on one hood
and like, 14 pieces of crap on another hood?
Is red the most popular color or is camo the best?
Who knows? But we'll be able to draw some conclusions
in about 30 days.
Okay, we've got some time on our hands.
So, while we wait, I've got an idea.
Let's turn this myth upside down
and see if we can find ways
to stop birds from pooping on our cars.
I wonder if there's any way if we can like,
specifically repel birds
from every car.
What if we each come up
with our own unique invention
that keeps birds from pooping on our cars?
It'll be a little competition.
-Oh. -Oh.
I'm so down. I love that idea.
I have the perfect repellant.
I'm gonna have to put some brain power behind this because normally
I try to attract birds to me, not repel them.
But, uh, that's right.
I'm, I'm down for a competition. I love this.
How are we gonna judge who wins?
-Well. -Well, least amount of poop.
Who gets pooped on the least?
-Yeah, duh. That's perfect. -Yep.
Nothing will come near my hood.
-Nothing. Not even humans. -Really?
Bisi's gonna just set a bed out there and just,
every time a bird comes, "Get away from my hood."
All right, guys, let's get to it.
[Tory] All right, this is exciting
because each of us are gonna come up with our own technique
to keep birds from pooping on our cars.
Now, my technique is lasers.
Why? Well, cats go crazy for them.
So, I'm hoping there's an adverse effect on birds.
The plan is, I'm gonna take all my laser beams.
How many do we have here?
We've got 55 total.
[Tory] Put them across the hood,
glue them down, turn them on,
and when the birds fly over
they'll look down, see the lasers
and it'll scare them off.
So, I'll set up these solar panels
and they'll stay on 24/7.
It's gonna be like, an explosion of lasers.
[laughs] Scary already.
I typically would have something really
verbose and crazy and mechanical.
But you know what, sometimes,
you have to go to the basics.
And you can't get any more basic than what I have here.
In real life, owls are natural predators.
So, these owl statues should be a pretty good deterrent.
This actually works for my own workshop.
There will be no poop whatsoever on this hood.
All right. So, I actually think that
I'm gonna dominate this competition
because I'm gonna use a technique
that I actually use in my home garden
for keeping the deer off of my vegetables.
And that is,
motion-activated squirters.
And, I'm actually gonna utilize
the washer squirters on this hood.
So, I've got my, uh, under hood liner removed
and I'm actually just gonna go ahead and reverse these.
So normally they are facing towards the windshield.
[chuckles]
Facing the hood.
[laughs heartily] So, I've got,
both washer squirters.
I need the motion detectors.
So, bird lands, motion activation,
they get sprayed, they go away. Also, if they do poop
the spray [softly] might clean it off.
So, even if I don't win legit,
I'm gonna win.
Uh, hey, uh, hey, Tory!
-Come here for a sec. -Yes.
I need a hand lifting up this hood.
Hey. [laughs]
[Faye laughs]
It is time to see if it works.
Here, give me some more smoke.
Here comes the drop.
[mimicking beats]
Oh, yeah.
Okay, my hood's complete.
I can't wait to try this out in the field.
[narrator] But first, they've gotta see the results
of their bird poop test.
[birds chirping]
[Faye] So we are back at the bird poop lot.
It has been 30 days and now we're making
our final tabulation of poop on hoods.
[Tory] Whoa, look at this.
And so we're gonna finally see if there's truth to this myth.
[Bisi] Oh, I see some stuff.
Do birds prefer to poop on red cars?
Wow, okay, that's interesting.
Do they? I don't know.
You don't know. We're about to find out.
[Faye] Okay, we got some action over here.
-[Tory] Ten turds. -On the white.
-Three, four, five, six, seven. -Four, five, six, seven.
[Tory] Wow, all right.
Is that one there? That's one.
[Bisi] Okay, rainbow.
[Faye] Okay.
-[Tory] Yellow. -[Faye] One. That's it.
That is crazy.
The poop is camouflaged.
Whose idea was camouflage?
[Faye clears throat]
-Wow, the red got a lot. -[Bisi] Yeah, it did.
-[Tory] Is this one? Yeah, definitely. -[Bisi] Yes, it is.
[Bisi] Wow.
All right, should we, uh,
-tally up our numbers and see -[Bisi sighs] Yes.
-who's the winner? -[Faye] We shall.
[Faye] The results are totally unexpected.
The ornithologist felt that silver would be their favorite
as it was the most reflective color.
And even taking into account the wavelength of light
the birds can see that we can't,
there's no statistical correlation
with the color spectrum.
But personally, I'm pretty happy with the results.
[Bisi] Long story short, look at the top three.
Still purple, white
and the red.
So, the myth that red cars attract more bird poop
-is busted. -Hundred percent.
I agree with you.
-Nice work. -Thank you.
We determined that red being the most popular is busted.
Birds do not prefer to poop more
on red hoods than any others.
[Tory] So, pooping on red cars is busted.
But this is MythBusters.
We're not gonna leave it like that.
All right. Okay.
This is gonna freak those birds out.
They're not gonna know what hit them.
Now, we're gonna try something completely different.
We're gonna see if we can repel birds
with our ingenious gadgets.
[Faye] So, just like in our first test
we are gonna leave these here for 30 days
and see if there's any poop on any of them.
And whoever has the most poop is the loser.
Hopefully, there's some of us that don't have any poop.
[Tory] Those are all lasers.
-You're kidding me? -No.
So, basically I'm gonna have like a,
an array of lasers shooting straight up.
So, I'm hoping they'll look down and go,
"What the hell is that?" and then fly away.
And go hang out with their friends.
No, natural predator.
You're like, a high-tech guy.
I thought you might go with something
a little bit higher tech.
But you what, simplicity sometimes rules.
Okay. I got some motion detectors here.
-I see. -Yeah.
Some proximity sensors going on here.
Exactly. So when the birds land on the wire,
-Okay. -then, uh,
-the sensors-- -Will call you?
-Yeah. Exactly. -Oh.
And then I'll come over and scare them away.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
-Good luck with that. -Mm-hm. Yeah.
Yeah. No problem. Will do.
My predictions,
no bird poop on this hood.
Lots of failures to the left and right of me.
[Tory] Well, we're all set.
And I guess in 30 days we'll come back
and crown me the victor.
[chuckles] He means me the victor.
[birds squawking]
-So it's been a month. -[Faye] I know.
I'm really excited, you guys.
I just hope that you guys are ready
to, uh, witness me crushing you
-[Bisi] Oh. -with my invention.
[Tory] Wow, that's impressive.
[Bisi] That's amazing.
-Let's take a look. -Wait a second.
Wait a second. Wait a second. Oh, crap!
You got one little piece of poop.
-Okay. -No, I got a few.
-Oh. -Ah, careful.
-You got one there. -Okay.
[Faye] Oh, crap.
Literally, crap.
-[Faye] This is not good. -Let's count them up.
[Faye] One, two, three,
-four, five, six, -I got 13.
Okay, on to Congress.
-All right, the Congress. -Congress.
All right, we got one.
-How dare they? -Two.
-Three, four, five. -[Faye laughs]
-[Bisi] Four. -What's that?
-That looks like a poop. -[Bisi] No.
Circle it. That's a poop. That's a poop.
That's a poop on the back of the owl.
That's how scared they were.
-Oh, man. -Okay, that's six.
-All right. -Moving on to lasers.
-Three, four, five, six. -Three, four,
five, six,
seven, eight, nine, ten.
Eleven. All right.
Eleven, what?
Well, ah!
Good job, Bisi. I wanna,
-I wanna say congratulations -As much--
-for winning the competition. -Thank you.
Uh, I'm happy to be a runner up, second place.
[grunts] Feels good.
Ah, I have nothing to say.
All right, so as far as the myth goes,
uh, totally busted on whether or not
birds are actually attracted to red cars more than any other cars.
Awesome. Seems like owls are the winner.
Uh, and I suppose I should be like, upset about that
but, I don't know, I'm, I'm like a super low-tech loving person.
So, like, even though I lost
I'm actually, like, still kinda stoked.
Like, technology's not always the answer.
[Bisi] See, the perfect invention would be
some type of contraption that when you park,
just like exotic, luxury cars from Europe,
the owls will just emerge from the hood.
And your Victorias will keep away
matter from your vehicle.
I think you're onto something.
I think so as well. I'll think about that.
Do you need some seed money?
-Literally, I do. I like that. -Seed money.
[Faye] Fold up owls.
[Faye screaming]
[all laughing]
Turn that damn thing off.