This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Jason Goldman.Wild animals are equipped with a variety of techniques to avoid becoming lunch for a bigger, toothier animal.The most well-known methods include the classic “fight” and “flight,” as well as “freeze.”A team of researchers wondered how proximity to people might impact those survival strategies.“We often see that animals are more tolerant around us in urban areas, but we don't really know why.”U.C.L.A. evolutionary biologist Dan Blumstein.“Is it a filtering process where only the tolerant animals are there? Is it individual plasticity, meaning individuals change their fear of us, and that leads to tolerance? Or can there be an evolutionary dynamic occurring?”To find out, Blumstein and colleagues combined information from 173 studies of more than 100 species, including mammals, birds, reptiles, fish and even mollusks.Turns out that regardless of evolutionary lineage, the animals react in a similar way to life among humans: they lose their antipredator traits. That pattern is especially pronounced for herbivores and for social species.This behavioral change is perhaps unsurprising when it’s intentional, the result of domestication and a controlled breeding paradigm.
