Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

(photo Source: Pixabay) whenever the rush hour is stuck in traffic in the morning and evening, when it is difficult to drive, it is hard to avoid feeling upset. When you meet the cars around you honking their horns, it makes people even more angry and always want to yell.

Large number of people and cars and large noise is an unavoidable malpractice in big cities. These noises not only annoy people living in cities, but also affect wild animals.

The European robin, also known as the Eurasian robin (scientific name: Erithacus rubecula), is a common small passerine bird in Europe, which sounds like a pleasant flute and is marked by bright orange feathers on the chest.

(photo source: Unsplash) Mockingbirds have a strong sense of territory. When there is a similar invasion of their territory, they will stretch their necks, shake their heads, show their chest feathers to each other, or change their calls to drive away the uninvited guest.

In nature, animals often use similar signals to drive away enemies. For example, when a cat arches its back, its hair explodes and its mouth hisses, it is warning others not to come near.

Don't come over here! (photo Source: gifer) this signal is benign to both the owner of the territory and the intruder. If the warning is successful and the intruder is persuaded to return, the two sides will avoid a hand-to-hand fight. If the contradiction escalates, the owner of the land will launch a physical attack to drive away the other party.

Previous studies have shown that urban robins have a worse temper and more frequent physical attacks than robins living in the countryside. Recently, some scientists have found that it may be because of the traffic noise that these lovely birds also have "road anger".

To understand the relationship between traffic noise and robin aggressiveness, a team of researchers from the UK and Turkey printed a plastic robin in 3D to test the response of the robin.

(photo: representative of the research team: ca fake la ö nsal.) they placed the fake bird in the noisy city center and quiet outer suburbs of the city, keeping it close to other robin territory. The fake bird is equipped with a loudspeaker that can sound like a robin, and a separate stereo is placed nearby to play traffic noise.

The researchers found that when they played suddenly amplified traffic noise to urban and rural robins, the country robins were significantly more grumpy than before, and they flew closer to intimidate fake birds.

On the other hand, when urban robins heard the noise played by the researchers, their behavior was not significantly different from that before, and even reduced the frequency of their calls, as if they had learned to "sit still" when the noise was too loud.

In addition, when there is no traffic noise, urban robins show more visual signals to invading fake birds than rural robins, such as craning their necks and raising their tails, while vocal signals such as songs are less expressive.

Scientists speculate that this is because too much noise prevents robins from communicating with each other, making it difficult for them to transmit sound signals effectively. Urban robins live in this noisy environment, and although they are grumpy, they are more experienced in dealing with sudden increases in noise, and they are not in vain at this time.

Hey, hey! (photo source: gifer) however, the high aggressiveness exposes the robin to danger. When they are angrily trying to drive away invaders, they ignore potential predators around them and have no way to escape in the first place.

In addition to hindering the communication between animals, noise pollution has many effects on wild animals.

For animals such as birds and frogs that rely heavily on special calls to attract mates, noise can affect their courtship behavior. The most fascinating sounds tend to be low, but some animals have to raise their voices in order to compete with low-frequency noise such as car engines, which makes them sound less attractive.

In noisy environments, animals have limited sound transmission distances, which means they can only reproduce on a smaller scale, which scientists fear will reduce the population size and genetic diversity of these species in the long run.

In addition, some animals rely on sound to locate or navigate. Bats and dolphins, for example, can use echolocation to identify obstacles or prey ahead by making calls of a certain frequency.

Human-made noise such as traffic or sonar may cause such animals to lose their way, damage their hearing, or force them to adjust their voices, but they will not be able to receive effective echoes.

Animals like owls have evolved complex and sophisticated ears to help them collect sounds around them and find prey. But the noisy environment makes it difficult to find food. It is difficult for humans to recognize the difference of 1 decibel, but for owls, every 1 decibel increase in noise reduces their foraging success rate by 8%.

Help! where on earth is that noise?! (photo: gifer) knowing that people's behavior more or less affects the wild animals and even plants around us, we can try to explore more solutions, or at least cherish the existence of so many amazing creatures on the planet, or there will be only the lonely planet.

Reference:

[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11512791/Robins-physically-aggressive-traffic-study-finds.html

[2] nsal, Yelimlie, Ak ç ay. Aggression and multi-modal signaling in noise in a common urban songbird [J]. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 2022, 76 (7): 1-10.

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/06/robin-road-rage-study-shows-traffic-noise-makes-birds-more-aggressive

[4] https://www.wildlifehc.org/4-ways-that-noise-pollution-can-impact-wildlife-and-4-ways-to-help

This article is from the official Wechat account: bring Science Home (ID:steamforkids), written by: Ziv, revised by Shen Mengxi

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