« Even when predators aren’t killing anything, their tracks, smells, and sounds can instill a state of simmering unease in their prey. This creates what ecologists call a “landscape of fear”—a mental map of risk that affects how hunted animals move over physical terrain. For example, in 2016, [researchers] showed that raccoons in the Gulf Islands spent less time foraging on local beaches if they heard recordings of dogs. And because the raccoons skedaddled, the rock pools filled with more fish, worms, and crabs. Fear reshaped the entire beach.
[…] But what about humans? [Researchers] placed speakers at sites where mountain lions had killed large prey and were regularly returning to feed; [and found that] human voices made them flee more than 80 percent of the time. […M]edium-size carnivores were also perturbed: Bobcats became more nocturnal, skunks became less active, and opossums spent less time foraging. The only animals that benefited were mice and rats, which took advantage of the predators’ absence […].
This study suggests that a conversation between two hikers can have a butterfly effect—a mountain lion moves more quickly, an opossum changes its feeding habits, deer-mouse activity increases […]. People often fear large carnivores like mountain lions, but in reality, they are far more scared of us. And as this study suggests, their fear can reshape ecosystems.
Experiments like his give an incredibly comprehensive picture of the reverberations of the human super-predator across the entire community […]. If [animals] are stressed, could they grow more slowly? If they spend more time hiding, could they miss out on mating opportunities? If they’re not foraging enough, would they die younger? […]
Crucially, these effects are separate from all the other things that humans do to animals, from destroying habitats to hunting them directly. [T]hrough our mere presence, we can affect wildlife by changing the contours of their landscapes of fear. “We’re a very loud and big species,” says Suraci. “Much of what we do is potentially terrifying to wildlife, like industrial activity and vehicle traffic. We tried to get past all of that and isolate the perceived presence of humans, separate from all the other disturbing things we do. And the implication is that we don’t need to cut down the forest to have an impact on wildlife.” »
— Ed Yong, “The Disturbing Sound of a Human Voice” in The Atlantic
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