ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2015
Speed kills: ineffective avian escape responses to oncoming vehicles.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 90 citations in OpenAlex.
- Do more birds mean more bird-aircraft collisions? A meta-analysis testing a key wildlife management tenet.PloS one · 2026Pooled it
- Unmanned aircraft systems as a new source of disturbance for wildlife: A systematic review.PloS one · 2017Pooled it
- A model to quantify the probability of collision between birds and aircraft: Applications for onboard lighting.Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America · 2026Article
- Light tuned to the avian eye elicits early detection and escape from an approaching aircraft.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Anthropogenic, environmental and temporal associations with vertebrate road mortality in a wildland-urban interface of a biodiverse desert ecoregion.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
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- Can we use antipredator behavior theory to predict wildlife responses to high-speed vehicles?PloS one · 2022Article
- Responses of turkey vultures to unmanned aircraft systems vary by platform.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Exploiting common senses: sensory ecology meets wildlife conservation and management.Conservation physiology · 2021Article
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- Roads do not increase carrion use by a vertebrate scavenging community.Scientific reports · 2018Article
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Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Animal-vehicle collisions cause high levels of vertebrate mortality worldwide, and what goes wrong when animals fail to escape and ultimately collide with vehicles is not well understood. We investigated alert and escape behaviours of captive brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater) in response to virtual vehicle approaches of different sizes and at speeds ranging from 60 to 360 km h(-1). Alert and flight initiation distances remained similar across vehicle speeds, and accordingly, alert and flight initiation times decreased at higher vehicle speeds. Thus, avoidance behaviours in cowbirds appeared to be based on distance rather than time available for escape, particularly at 60-150 km h(-1); however, at higher speeds (more than or equal to 180 km h(-1)) no trend in response behaviour was discernible. As vehicle speed increased, cowbirds did not have enough time to assess the approaching vehicle, and cowbirds generally did not initiate flight with enough time to avoid collision when vehicle speed exceeded 120 km h(-1). Although potentially effective for evading predators, the decision-making process used by cowbirds in our study appears maladaptive in the context of avoiding fast-moving vehicles. Our methodological approach and findings provide a framework to assess how novel management strategies could affect escape rules, and the sensory and cognitive abilities animals use to avoid vehicle collisions.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.