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Wolves and their prey all fear the human "super predator".

Katharina Kasper1, Elise Say-Sallaz1, Michael Clinchy2

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Fear of humans causes wolves and their prey to become more nocturnal, impacting wildlife behavior in human-dominated landscapes. This research experimentally confirms wolves' fear of humans, shifting focus from wolf behavior to human influences on wildlife.

Keywords:
anti-predator behaviorecology of fearfear of humans as predatorsfear of wolveshuman-wildlife conflictlarge carnivores

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Area of Science:

  • Ecology
  • Animal Behavior
  • Human-Wildlife Interactions

Background:

  • Public discourse and research on human-wildlife conflict often focus on the "big bad wolf," yet fear of humans in wolves remains experimentally untested.
  • Humans are significant predators of wolves, and experiments show diverse mammals exhibit fear of humans, impacting community dynamics.
  • Previous inferences of wolf fear were based on increased nocturnality in human presence, lacking experimental validation.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To experimentally test for fear of humans in wolves and their ungulate prey.
  • To quantify the impact of human presence on wolf and prey nocturnality.
  • To re-evaluate the discourse on human-wolf conflict by understanding the role of fear.

Main Methods:

  • Conducted experiments in a human-dominated European landscape using automated camera-speakers.
  • Broadcasted playbacks of human, dog, or bird sounds to wolves and their prey.
  • Quantified behavioral responses, including flight initiation and site abandonment, and measured nocturnality.

Main Results:

  • Both wolves and their prey exhibited significant fear of humans, being more than twice as likely to flee and twice as fast to abandon sites compared to controls.
  • Wolves and their prey displayed equivalent levels of nocturnality, both significantly more nocturnal than humans.
  • Experimental results confirm that fear of humans drives increased nocturnality in wolves and their prey.

Conclusions:

  • This study experimentally verifies that fear of humans significantly influences wolf and prey behavior, trapping them in nocturnal activity patterns.
  • The findings corroborate the universality of wolves' fear of humans, challenging the notion of fearless wolves in human-dominated environments.
  • Human food subsidies, rather than fearless predation, may better explain why wolves engage with human presence, reframing human-wolf conflict discussions.