Animals Are Avoiding Us
Humans have an image problem. But we might be able to use it for good.
Imagine a contest that pits humans against lions to see which is more fearsome. It may sound like a Colosseum fight card, but last year, a team led by Liana Zanette, an ecologist at the University of Western Ontario, arranged exactly this matchup—for science. The point was not to settle some grade-school debate about which animal would survive a vicious fight to the death, but rather to see how much each species is feared by other animals.
It’s not a trivial question. Fear shapes animal behavior, and animal behavior shapes our world in profound ways. Scientists are only beginning to understand fear’s effects, but already, evidence suggests that a terrified animal will eat less and reproduce less than an unterrified
