But with the fishermen, the behavior change occurred in the anthropause waaaaay Too fast to be genetic. Instead, it could be a change driven by choices made by individuals or groups of animals. “You see personalities differ,” says Wikelski. “Now there may be a selection for certain personalities to enter cities, and that can spread through their culture.”
“The global experiment on the transmission and retention of information in animal societies is incredibly beautiful,” adds Wikelski.
Scientists can observe such dramatic and rapid behavioral changes thanks to increasingly sophisticated monitoring equipment. Tracking collars, of course, map an animal’s movement, but some now come equipped with inertia measurement units, or IMUs, the same sensors that allow you to switch your phone to control a game. This allows researchers to determine if a wild animal has suddenly accelerated, indicating that it might have been startled. An even more sophisticated monitoring device could detect the animal’s heart rate or listen to its interactions with its peers with a microphone.
“It’s the Fitbit for animals,” says Wikelski. “They are sick? They are fine? Are they interacting? How fast are they moving? Are they getting up at the right time at the same time as before? Are they active differently at night, during the day?
During anthropause, researchers can combine this data that tracks animal behavior with data that tracks human behavior, particularly trafficking, to show whether a species might be exploiting our absence or doing its usual activities in the wild. As anthropause continues and eventually subsides, scientists will be able to see how a species adapts, answering questions that would have been impossible to address were it not for the pandemic.
Researchers have been trying to solve one of these puzzles for decades: are animals afraid of our built environment (roads, buildings, and other infrastructure) or are they afraid of us? “Suddenly we didn’t have humans in many areas,” says ecologist Matthias-Claudio Loretto of the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior and the University of Konstanz, co-author of the article on anthropause. So, he says, if animals visit these places during the pandemic shutdown, “obviously, they are normally afraid of humans.”
On the other hand, if a particular species did not penetrate a populated area, even with humans missing in recent months, that could be an indication that it is the built environment that keeps them away. But conservation biologists can observe the species that did tour an area and observe the paths they took.
The puzzle is more nuanced in urban places where restrictions on movement have not been particularly tight. Perhaps a city has allowed residents to go for walks, so animals still avoid public parks, but instead appear in places that are completely closed to people. Some cities may have restricted driving, while others may not: Researchers can look at both traffic and animal data to see how species adapted in different areas.
Anthropause is giving scientists a unique opportunity to study how animals move through built environments; This knowledge could inform new modifications to urban areas to provide a safe passage for animals. For example, perhaps if we learn that a development or highway has cut the habitat and population of one species in two, we could bring them together to foster genetic diversity: Isolated populations, after all, tend to be inbred. “It’s not good enough that managers tell animals where to go,” says Wikelski. “Animals should tell us where they need to go, where they want to go. It is the corridor defined by animals that we need.
But not all animal species have benefited from the freedom of having fewer humans around. Generalists among them, such as coyotes, rats, and wild boar, can comfortably roam the city streets, taking whatever food they can. But there is nothing for a mountain lion in downtown San Francisco: its prey, like deer, remain in the mountainous regions south of the city.
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