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posted by Fnord666 on Friday April 10 2020, @05:03AM   Printer-friendly
from the squirrel! dept.

The real reason we're seeing more wildlife during the pandemic:

As the world has slowed down to stave off the spread of COVID-19, stories of wild animals tromping into now-quiet city streets have gone viral online. Some of these turned out to be completely made-up, including the dolphins supposedly swimming through Venice canals or the elephants getting drunk on corn wine in a Chinese farming village. But there are also plenty of very real sightings of animals you might not expect in the urban jungle.

[...] Joanna Lambert, a wildlife biologist at the University of Colorado-Boulder, has been seeing more wildlife lately in Lyons, Colorado, where she lives. She watched a mountain lion pad through her townhome complex and spotted a gray fox—an uncommon species to find in nature, let alone in the streets—on a daytime walk with her dogs. "They are paying attention, and certainly things have quieted down," she says of wild mammals living near cities. "One of the hallmarks of species that live near or within human settlements is that they are very behaviorally flexible and responsive to these kinds of changes."

[...] As cities quiet down and empty out, many animals may quickly take note. Lambert says she wouldn't expect the changes to be dramatic. Wild animals still rely on open spaces for food and shelter, and thus we won't be seeing coyotes moving their dens downtown any time soon. But it's possible they might be venturing farther or switching up their schedules. "The medium-size predators are opportunistic by nature," says Shilling. "They are responding in real time to the disturbance. They have territories and the edges are flexible based on what's making them go away."

[...] However, in the case of the larger animals, some officials think the change is mainly due to our own perception. Now, with many at home and bored, we're perhaps increasingly staring out the window and going on walks in our neighborhood. A press release by the Colorado Parks and Wildlife department says that the increased sightings are more likely just due to being at home. "With more people at home looking or being outside, wildlife sightings could go up," reads the statement. "This won't be a new phenomenon, the animals have always been there, but they may have previously gone undetected."


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 10 2020, @11:04AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 10 2020, @11:04AM (#980777)

    I'm sure I saw some... they were walking down MLK Blvd.