In May 2025, the European Parliament changed the status of wolves in the EU from “strictly protected” to “protected,” which opened the way for its member states to allow hunting under certain conditions, such as protecting livestock. One of the arguments behind this change was that the “tolerance of modern society towards wolves” led to the emergence of “fearless wolves” that are no longer afraid of people.
“Regulators made it clear, though, that there is no scientific evidence to back this up,” says Michael Clinchy, a zoologist at Western University in London, Canada. “So we did the first-of-its-kind study to find out if wolves have really lost their fear of humans. We proved there is no such thing as a fearless wolf.” //
To figure out if wolves really were no longer afraid of humans, Zanette, Clinchy, and their colleagues set up 24 camera traps in the Tuchola Forest. //
When sensors in the traps detected an animal nearby, the system took a photo and played one of three sounds, chosen at random.
The first sound was chirping birds, which the team used as a control. “We chose birds because this is a typical part of forest soundscape and we assumed wolves would not find this threatening,” Clinchy says. The next sound was barking dogs. The team picked this one because a dog is another large carnivore living in the same ecosystem, so it was expected to scare wolves. The third sound was just people talking calmly in Polish. Zanette, Clinchy, and their colleagues quantified the level of fear each sound caused in wolves by measuring how quickly they vacated the area upon hearing it. //
Compared to the control sound of birds, hearing people was twice as likely to make wolves run, and it made them run twice as fast. Comparison to dogs also ended up in our favor: The wolves found humans roughly 20 percent more threatening. The same pattern held true for deer and wild boars, typical prey of wolves, which also got caught in the camera traps.
“These results track with basically the same experiment we did in Africa, where we tested the entire savannah mammal community,” Clinchy says. In that work, Clinchy and Zanette found that leopards, hyenas, and many other animals feared humans more than lions. //
The question, though, is whether we really have reasons to fear such encounters just as much as wolves fear them. “There have been no fatal wolf attacks in Europe in the last 40 years or so,” Clinchy says. In Poland, a wolf bit an 8-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy playing outside in 2018, and a pack of wolves circled two forest workers for about 20 minutes in 2021 without attacking them. That’s about all there is in the Polish big bad wolf files. //
nooneofconsequence Smack-Fu Master, in training
11y
66
Subscriptor
It's 10 year old data but USDA says vultures kill more calves than wolves do. Purdue data says over 2% die in feedlots before slaughter. Last year in Colorado lightning killed more cattle than wolves. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/colorado-cattle-death-lightning-jackson-county-b2552447.html //
rhavenn Ars Tribunus Militum
23y
1,721
Subscriptor++
Moose kill more people yearly, but because they're "delicious", not "scary", and don't predate on farm animals no one gives a shit. Bears and wolves want nothing to do with you, the human. 90%+ of the time you won't even know they're there unless they want you to if you're out hiking or they don't care.
I can’t believe I caught THIS on camera… a bee having a wee! 🐝👇
Yep, it turns out that bees do wee, well kind of – but not like we do. Apparently they’ve got a clever little system that gets rid of wee and poop in one go, usually mid-flight, so they don’t mess up the hive (that’s very well trained!)
It’s normally such a blink-and-you-miss-it thing… but while I was filming the echinops in full bloom at @fieldgateflowers this week, one bee just went for it right in front of me.
The feathers can emit two frequencies of laser light from multiple regions across their colored eyespots. //
Peacock feathers are greatly admired for their bright iridescent colors, but it turns out they can also emit laser light when dyed multiple times, according to a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports. Per the authors, it's the first example of a biolaser cavity within the animal kingdom.
As previously reported, the bright iridescent colors in things like peacock feathers and butterfly wings don't come from any pigment molecules but from how they are structured. The scales of chitin (a polysaccharide common to insects) in butterfly wings, for example, are arranged like roof tiles. Essentially, they form a diffraction grating, except photonic crystals only produce certain colors, or wavelengths, of light, while a diffraction grating will produce the entire spectrum, much like a prism.
Both are naturally occurring examples of what physicists call photonic crystals. Also known as photonic bandgap materials, photonic crystals are "tunable," which means they are precisely ordered in such a way as to block certain wavelengths of light while letting others through. Alter the structure by changing the size of the tiles, and the crystals become sensitive to a different wavelength. (In fact, the rainbow weevil can control both the size of its scales and how much chitin is used to fine-tune those colors as needed.).
Even better (from an applications standpoint), the perception of color doesn't depend on the viewing angle. //
quackmeister Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
8y
162
If this didn't already appear in a scene from the Incredibles set in the villain's palatial gardens, it should have. //
Chuckstar Ars Legatus Legionis
22y
35,919
Gives me an opportunity to link to my favorite video of a wild peacock in action. In case anyone wondered if the peacock's tail really acted as a proxy that the individual had to be fit enough to simply survive carrying such a thing around (if the embedded time stamp doesn't work, the action starts at 1:15):
Sensational new findings published in Nature Communications effectively blow the politicised wildfire climate change scam out of the water. Far from human-caused climate change making wildfires worse across the United States and Canada, it was found that recent fires occurred at a rate of only 23% of that expected from a review of the previous historical record going back to the 17th century. The researchers note that a current “widespread fire deficit” persists across a range of forest types and the areas burned in the recent past “are not unprecedented” when considering the multi-century perspective. //
These are facts. Fire scars are actual, physical evidence of a historic event, one that, due to stacking historic tree-ring data, can be very accurately dated. The records go back to the mid-1700s, conveniently when European explorers and settlers first came into the various landscapes and started cutting trees for building houses and other buildings - and some of these trees bore fire scars, and some of those structures are still standing.
It's an interesting technique.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-56333-8
Quizzical
3 hours ago
You say that this is journalistic malpractice. But many journalists have no other type of practice besides malpractice.
A Rocha is a global family of conservation organizations working together to live out God’s calling to care for creation and equip others to do likewise.
Nature conservation
Through residential field study centres and our site-based projects we carry out ecological monitoring and research in areas of high value for wildlife.
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We support Christians for environmental action through conservation projects, resources for churches and involvement in global networks.
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We encourage appreciation of nature and participation in its conservation, through environmental education and community outreach.
Now, in a revelation that's eggz-traordinary, we learn that the world's oldest known wild bird - yes, a 74-year-old Gooney bird named "Wisdom" - has laid what observers think is its 60th egg, which has to be some kind of a record. //
Wisdom is a veritable Methuselah among birds, but reports are that she is healthy, and therefore not a birden on her new mate, who has clearly fowlen in love with the elderly gooney. And this sp-egg-tacular feat or reproduction will surely land Wisdom and her new tweet-heart in the record books.
Albatrosses are known as a good-luck sign among seafarers, although woe be to any nautical type who harms one. They are impressive fliers, wielding a wingspan that can approach eight feet. They can sleep on the wing, which allows them to stay at sea for extended periods, and they roam the North Pacific from America to Asia, from Hawaii to the Aleutians, seeking the squid, fish, and crustaceans that make up their diet. They are reported to live up to 60 years in the wild, although Wisdom has surpassed not only the typical gooney lifespan but also the traditional human threescore and ten. She seems determined to hang around, and it's good to set gulls for oneself. //
7againstthebes
an hour ago
Here is something for you to think about. An Laysan Albatross flies about 50,000 miles per year. So this particular bird has flown nearly four million miles in her lifetime.
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