ArticleScientific reports2013
High individual consistency in fear of humans throughout the adult lifespan of rural and urban burrowing owls.
Article in Scientific reports, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Increased tolerance to humans among disturbed wildlife.Nature communications · 2015Pooled it
- Fluctuations in direct human presence, not predictable weekly cycles, influence avoidance behaviour in ravens.Movement ecology · 2026Article
- "Whoooo said that?": responses of captive owls (PeerJ · 2026Article
- Species' urbanization time but not present urban tolerance predicts avian fear responses towards human.BMC biology · 2025Article
- Light tuned to the avian eye elicits early detection and escape from an approaching aircraft.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Urban birds' tolerance towards humans was largely unaffected by COVID-19 shutdown-induced variation in human presence.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Little Owl Aggression and Territory in Urban and Rural Landscapes.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- Nesting innovations in neotropical parrots associated to anthropogenic environmental changes.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Intraspecific competition and individual behaviour but not urbanization affect the dietary patterns of a generalist avian predator.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Bird tolerance to humans in open tropical ecosystems.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Drivers of the Ectoparasite Community and Co-Infection Patterns in Rural and Urban Burrowing Owls.Biology · 2022Article
- Can we use antipredator behavior theory to predict wildlife responses to high-speed vehicles?PloS one · 2022Article
- Consistency in the flight and visual orientation distances of habituated chacma baboons after an observed leopard predation. Do flight initiation distance methods always measure perceived predation risk?Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- The Harris Hawk (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2021Article
- Consistent choice of landscape urbanization level across the annual cycle in a migratory waterbird species.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Urban life promotes delayed dispersal and family living in a non-social bird species.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Evolutionary dynamics in the Anthropocene: Life history and intensity of human contact shape antipredator responses.PLoS biology · 2020Article
- The Role of Animal Cognition in Human-Wildlife Interactions.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Review
- Article
- Differences in adrenocortical responses between urban and rural burrowing owls: poorly-known underlying mechanisms and their implications for conservation.Conservation physiology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Human-induced rapid environmental changes challenge individuals by creating evolutionarily novel scenarios, where species encounter novel enemies, the new species sometimes being humans themselves. However, little is known about how individuals react to human presence, specifically whether they are able to habituate to human presence, as frequently assumed, or are selected based on their fear of humans. We tested whether fear of humans (measured as flight initiation distance in a diurnal owl) is reduced through habituation to human presence (plasticity) or whether it remains unchanged throughout the individuals' life. Results show an unusually high level of individual consistency in fear of humans throughout the adult lifespan of both rural (r = 0.96) and urban (r = 0.90) birds, lending no support to habituation. Further research should assess the role of inter-individual variability in fear of humans in shaping the distribution of individuals and species in an increasingly humanized world.
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