This quickly became an issue, at least for some people. Mieczys\u0142aw Kacprzak, an MP from Poland\u2019s PSL Party, currently in the ruling coalition, addressed the parliament in December 2017, saying that wolves were roaming suburban roads and streets, terrorizing citizens\u2014in his view, a tragedy waiting to happen. He also said children were afraid to go to school because of wolves and asked for support from the Ministry of Agriculture, which could lift the ban on hunting. An article in \u201c\u0141owczy Polski,\u201d a journal of the Polish hunting community with a title that translates as \u201cThe Polish Huntsman,\u201d later backed these pro-hunting arguments, claiming wolves were a threat to humans, especially children.<\/p>\n
The idea was wolves, in absence of hunting, ceased to perceive humans as a threat and felt encouraged to approach them. But it was an idea that was largely supported by anecdote. \u201cWe found this was not the case,\u201d says Liana Zanette, a biologist at the Wester University and co-author of the study.<\/p>\n
Super predators<\/p>\n
To figure out if wolves really were no longer afraid of humans, Zanette, Clinchy, and their colleagues set up 24 camera traps in the Tuchola Forest. \u201cOur Polish colleagues and co-authors, especially Maciej Szewczyk, helped us set those traps in places where we were most likely to find wolves,\u201d Zanette says. \u201cMaciej was literally saying \u2018pick this tree,\u2019 or \u2018this crossroads.\u2019\u201d When sensors in the traps detected an animal nearby, the system took a photo and played one of three sounds, chosen at random.<\/p>\n
The first sound was chirping birds, which the team used as a control. \u201cWe chose birds because this is a typical part of forest soundscape and we assumed wolves would not find this threatening,\u201d Clinchy says. The next sound was barking dogs. The team picked this one because a dog is another large carnivore living in the same ecosystem, so it was expected to scare wolves. The third sound was just people talking calmly in Polish. Zanette, Clinchy, and their colleagues quantified the level of fear each sound caused in wolves by measuring how quickly they vacated the area upon hearing it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This quickly became an issue, at least for some people. Mieczys\u0142aw Kacprzak, an MP from Poland\u2019s PSL Party,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-229657","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}