Human noise affects animal behaviour, studies show

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/feb/03/human-noise-affects-animal-behaviour-studies-show

 

Traffic noise affected zebra finches’ foraging habits and field crickets’ mating

 

 Natalie Grover Science correspondent
Tue 2 Feb 2021 19.01 EST

Working from home during Covid-19 has brought noise pollution close to home, whether it’s your partner making calls within earshot or grinding coffee during your Zoom interview. Now research suggests the animal kingdom is also disturbed by the noise of humans and our gadgets.

As humans proliferate, we have penetrated deeper into wildlife habitats, creating a pervasive rise in environmental sound that not only directly affects the ability of animals to hear but indeed communicate. Emerging research suggests noise pollution, caused, for instance, by traffic, interferes with animal behaviour, including cognition and mating.

In an attempt to capture the impact of traffic sounds on cognitive performance, researchers gave adult zebra finches – a species of diminutive songbirds native to Australia – a series of foraging tasks.

The birds were either in a relatively quiet laboratory environment or treated to traffic noises designed to simulate a series of cars driving past 20 to 30 metres away.

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All tasks apart from colour association learning were negatively affected by traffic noise, the researchers wrote in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

“We weren’t really sure that we would see such a strong effect,” said study author Christopher Templeton, an assistant professor at Pacific University, Oregon, US.

“These are birds that … live in big colonies, they’re all talking all the time making quite a big ruckus. So, to see that just the simple act of hearing cars drive by is enough to really keep them from being able to perform on these tests is pretty surprising in some ways.”

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