Mary Bates, PhD

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Noise Pollution and Animal Communication

Crested lark singing. Artemy Voikhansky, via Wikimedia Commons. Distributed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

According to the World Health Organization, noise caused by human activities is one of the most hazardous forms of pollution. Now, a new study shows that human-made noise could hamper the communication of a variety of different animal species, from insects to frogs to birds. The meta-analysis found animals exposed to human-made noise adjusted parameters of their acoustic signals, with potential consequences for mate attraction, territory defense, and parent-offspring communication.

Read my latest post at Animal Minds: Noise Pollution Hampers Animal Communication.