![]() Willow tits produce alarm calls in response to most large aerial objects including planes and crows. For these species, ignoring a true alarm is more likely to result in death, so it may be beneficial to follow a “better-safe-than-sorry” principle and pay the cost of being occasionally wrong. ![]() This can be because they are not fast enough to escape a close encounter or not equipped to fight a predator off. Some species are instead simply more vulnerable to predators than others. Research found that bumblebees were more likely to produce false alarms having previously been exposed to highly camouflaged goldenrod crab spiders than bees that were unaccustomed to them. When predators are harder to identify, perhaps because they are well camouflaged, an animal may be more likely to mistake unrelated sounds or movements for a predator. The cost of performing alarm or escape behaviour. We found that the propensity for animals to produce false alarms varies depending on three main factors: In a recent article, we reviewed research on predator misidentification and found that false alarms are common throughout the animal kingdom. But what causes these false alarms and how can animals avoid them? The likelihood of a false alarm ![]() These mistakes can be costly in terms of lost foraging and resting time and wasted energy. And more than three quarters of the responses of semipalmated sandpipers and willow tits arise due to the misidentification of harmless stimuli as predators. The false alarm rate for South America’s Guianan cock-of-the-rock birds exceeds 70%. Over half of the anti-predator responses of greylag geese flocks occur when no predator is nearby. But this information is not always reliable.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |