Noisy Neighbours?

Two, diverse behavioural studies have demonstrated that traffic noise interferes with animal lives (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/feb/03/human-noise-affects-animal-behaviour-studies-show). In one study, colonial (they learn from eachother) Zebra finches from Australia were given a variety of cognitive tasks, all associated with obtaining food. Some birds were maintained under quiet laboratory conditions, whereas others were subjected to simulated noise of busy traffic. The traffic noise negatively affected performance in virtually all the tasks. In a second study, female Mediterranean field crickets were studied. They were assessed for their ability to recognise high quality male 'songs' (normally produced by stridulation). High quality songs signify the male has superior disease resistance, making them attractive mates. It was found that traffic noise interferes with the female's ability to differentiate different songs. Collectively, these studies emphasise that our human activities have subtle (often unappreciated) detrimental influences on animal communication. Traffic noise will certainly reduce the viability of some species.