The animals caught most often on camera were impala, which clearly showed this hierarchy of fear. So the king of beasts is definitely the king of beasts,” says Zanette, “and that was followed by wild dogs, that was followed by cheetahs, and then that was followed by a control to which they hardly ever ran.” ![]() “It was really a hierarchy of fear because animals feared lions most. And third, the prey might be most afraid of the predators with the highest likelihood of killing them if they do decide to attack, which would be the lions.Īfter collecting hundreds of videos of startled animals during their experiment, the researchers went through them and found the results aligned with the third hypothesis. Second, they could show most fear of the predators that kill their species most often. First, they could treat all predators as equally scary, in which case, they would run away just as often from all three of them. The scientists had three hypotheses about how the ungulates would respond to each predator. As Zanette explains, “The chances of catching anything on camera on a wildlife trail is pretty small, but almost everything needs to drink at some point or other.” To maximize their chances of finding wildlife, they installed the contraptions near watering holes. The researchers set up the camera and speaker systems at 14 different sites and left them running day and night for several weeks in July 2017. When the camera detected an animal moving nearby, it started recording a video and then triggered the speaker to play a predator sound. Then they played these scary sounds to wild animals using a speaker connected to a camera trap. ![]() They used short-range sounds like snarls and growls rather than roars so they could simulate a predator being close by. To test ungulates’ fear responses to different predators, the scientists first collected sound recordings of lions, cheetahs and African wild dogs, as well as bird calls to use as a non-scary control treatment. She adds that, “this can then affect the population numbers of the prey and have effects on their food further down the food chain.” “You can see that if they have different fear responses, that affects their foraging behavior,” Zanette says. ![]() According to Liana Zanette, a coauthor of the study and wildlife ecologist at Canada’s Western University, this “hierarchy of fear” is important because fear affects every aspect of a prey animal’s behavior, and can have rippling effects throughout the ecosystem. That’s the key finding of a recent study in Behavioral Ecology in which researchers report that ungulates run away from lions most often, followed by African wild dogs, and then cheetahs. Many South African ungulates, or hooved animals, have different fear-induced responses depending on what predator is nearby. But an hour later, if it hears a cheetah instead, the herbivore will often just keep drinking water, unperturbed by the potential predator nearby. So when it hears the sound of a snarling lion, the reddish-brown African antelope will often bolt for safety. When an impala stops at a watering hole for a quick drink, it’s already on the lookout for predators.
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