Kangaroos and Wallabies Fear the “Invisible Killer”…
What are marsupials most afraid of in Australia and Tasmania: Tasmanian devils? Dogs? Well, it’s…humans! A study shows that they immediately flee upon hearing human voices, and this was already the case for other animals on other continents. Do you remember the sounds of lions played through speakers in South Africa near a water point where rhinos drink, causing them to raise their heads upon hearing the super predator, and then calmly walk away… But when it’s human voices, the sound of the rhinos is a bit distant but they run… They bolt, even, the same goes for giraffes, antelopes, hyenas, leopards, or elephants, all more scared of humans than the king of animals. It was a team of researchers from the University of Western Ontario, Canada, from the “ecology of fear” laboratory – a research area that studies the effects of fear on living beings, who conducted this study, after observing the same thing – humans being more frightening than any other predator in North America or Europe… And they have just published new results in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society regarding Australia, and Tasmania, a slightly more unique setting than others because, as explained by biology professor and lead author Liana Zanette, for kangaroos and other marsupials: “There are no large carnivores… So we believe they are a bit naive about predators because they have not evolved with large carnivorous mammals for the past 40/50,000 years, so these marsupials have always lived, let’s say, in predation-relax mode.” But here… Kangaroos and wallabies also bounce and flee upon hearing a human voice, which is not shouting but speaking normally (the lady is polite, she even said hello), while upon hearing recordings of Tasmanian devils at the exact same location, but at a different time, the marsupials raise their heads, with their little paws in front, a bit curious, but they stay… Twice as scared of humans than anything else, they also tried with wolves, dogs, sheep… But nothing comes close to what the researcher calls… the invisible killer, “The invisible killer.” “In fact, there is a large predatory mammal in Australia and Tasmania, present for 40/50,000 years, which is extremely dangerous, and this predator: it’s us.” The aborigines, but especially the British colonizers who came to kill marsupials left and right to eat, make leather, protect crops, or just for fun, of course, and it continues today, except that we don’t realize it, we even think they are used to our presence, after all, how many Australians have seen kangaroos in their garden, but it’s not because they love us, it’s just food! Liana Zanette explains that unfortunately, “humans don’t really realize that we are a major predator everywhere in the world. We think we are nice, kind, and many of us are very nice and kind, but our evolutionary history is such that we have always killed a lot of animals, and we still do in crazy proportions today. So we don’t see ourselves as a predator but the wild world does, and that’s what this new study shows: wild animals see us completely as what we are: the most feared predator in the world.” With consequences on the rest of the living world, as always, but as often, we are much more focused on our own little world, forgetting that we are part of a whole without which we would be absolutely nothing. And that is the most dangerous.