Man-made noise can affect how animals use information from scents

Research by scientists at the University of Bristol has, for the first time, found that man-made noise can have a detrimental impact on an animal's use of scent - putting them at greater risk of being attacked by predators. Using field-based experimental trials on dwarf mongooses in South Africa, the researchers combined sound recordings and faecal samples to demonstrate that road-noise playback negatively affected the mongooses' ability to detect predator faeces. Even after detection, the additional noise led to less information gathering and less vigilance, making the mongooses more vulnerable to danger. Professor Andy Radford from the School of Biological Sciences said: "We've known for a long time that noise from urbanisation, traffic and airports can detrimentally affect humans by causing stress, sleep deprivation, cardiac problems and slower learning. What's becoming increasingly clear is that a lot of other species - mammals, birds, fish, insects and amphibians - are also impacted in all sorts of ways by anthropogenic, or man-made, noise." One obvious way in which man-made noise can cause animals problems is through the masking of valuable acoustic information. Lead author Amy Morris-Drake says: "What our study shows for the first time is that there could also be disruption to the use of olfactory information; man-made noise could affect decision-making based on information gathered using a different sense." The Bristol team's experiment used groups of wild dwarf mongooses that were so familiar with the researchers' close presence that they could walk within a few feet of them.