{"id":3425,"date":"2023-10-27T20:22:25","date_gmt":"2023-10-27T14:52:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adultserviceau.com.au\/blog\/the-worlds-most-frightening-animal-sounds-like-this\/"},"modified":"2023-10-27T20:22:25","modified_gmt":"2023-10-27T14:52:25","slug":"the-worlds-most-frightening-animal-sounds-like-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adultserviceau.com.au\/blog\/the-worlds-most-frightening-animal-sounds-like-this\/","title":{"rendered":"The World’s Most Frightening Animal Sounds like This"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Karen Hopkin<\/strong>: This is Scientific American<\/em>\u2019s Science, Quickly<\/em>. I\u2019m Karen Hopkin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the scariest sound you can think of? Is it\u2026?<\/p>\n

[CLIP: Scary breathing and screaming]\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hopkin: <\/strong>Or maybe\u2026?<\/p>\n

[CLIP: Terrifying music]<\/p>\n

Hopkin: <\/strong>How about\u2026?<\/p>\n

[CLIP: Lion roar]\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hopkin: <\/strong>Well, if you\u2019re a mammal in the African savanna, it may well be this:<\/p>\n

[CLIP: Audio from study: \u201cWomen\u2019s World Cup to be held in England and Wales from the 24th of June to the 23rd of July.\u201d]<\/p>\n

Hopkin<\/strong>: A new study shows that animals from impalas to elephants are more likely to flee from a talking human<\/a> \u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n

[CLIP: Audio from study: \u201cMy dad was a teacher, so I grew up in a home where everything I knew was sports.\u201d]\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hopkin: <\/strong>Than from a snarling lion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

[CLIP: Lion snarl from study]<\/p>\n

Hopkin: <\/strong>The work appears in the journal Current Biology<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Liana Zanette<\/strong>: We\u2019ve been working in the ecology of fear for a couple of decades now.<\/p>\n

Hopkin<\/strong>: Liana Zanette<\/a> is a professor of biology at Western University in Ontario. She says that fear is an overlooked aspect of predator-prey interactions.<\/p>\n

Zanette<\/strong>: When we think about how predators can affect prey populations, we think about killing, right? Like the lion goes in and kills the zebra, and that’s one less zebra in the population.<\/p>\n

Hopkin<\/strong>: But even if a predator doesn\u2019t kill you, it can still scare the pants off you, which then affects your behavior.<\/p>\n

Zanette<\/strong>: You hear a predator around, you take off …<\/p>\n

Hopkin<\/strong>: Even if you\u2019re a professor of biology.<\/p>\n

Zanette<\/strong>: When, for example, I\u2019m out in South Africa, and I hear lions snarling and growling, I run, y\u2019know? I\u2019m not hanging around.<\/p>\n

Hopkin<\/strong>: That makes total sense.<\/p>\n

Zanette<\/strong>: All animals, even the human kind, have evolved as prey for something else, right? And so we all have the same responses when we encounter a life-threatening event. We all mount behavioral antipredator defenses to avoid being killed.<\/p>\n

Hopkin<\/strong>: That includes skedaddling like your life depends on it\u2014because it does.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Zanette<\/strong>: But we can see, too, that there\u2019s going to be the cost, right? There\u2019s going to be trade-offs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hopkin<\/strong>: In previous studies\u2014on everything from cougars and sparrows<\/a> to European badgers\u2014Zanette found that fear affects animals\u2019 fitness.<\/p>\n

Zanette<\/strong>: Scared prey eat less. And we\u2019ve shown in those other studies that that can affect population numbers and lead to cascading effects down the food chain. That\u2019s the ecological consequences of fear.<\/p>\n

Hopkin<\/strong>: So where do people fit in? Animals certainly have good reason to fear us.<\/p>\n

Zanette<\/strong>: We know now that, through global surveys, that humans kill prey at far greater rates than other predators do.<\/p>\n

Hopkin<\/strong>: But can we possibly be as intimidating as creatures we typically think of as predators such as lions and tigers and bears? To find out, Liana and her colleagues headed to South Africa.<\/p>\n

Zanette<\/strong>: Because it\u2019s home to the largest population of the most fearsome predator on the planet, the king of beasts: lions. So if animals are gonna be maximally afraid of what we consider to be the most fearsome, large carnivore predator on the planet, it\u2019s going to be there.<\/p>\n

Hopkin<\/strong>: On the savanna, Liana and her team looked to the local animal population to determine \u201cWho\u2019s more menacing, them…?\u00a0<\/p>\n

[CLIP: Lions from study]\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hopkin: <\/strong>Or us?\u00a0<\/p>\n

[CLIP: Humans from study]\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hopkin: <\/strong>The researchers set up motion-sensitive camera-and-speaker systems at 21 water holes around Greater Kruger National Park. When an animal would wander within about 30 feet of the device, a sound clip would play from the speaker while the video camera recorded the creature\u2019s response. The audio might feature a lion growling …\u00a0<\/p>\n