ArticleScientific reports2021
Visual marking in mammals first proved by manipulations of brown bear tree debarking.
Article in Scientific reports, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Exaggerated signaling in a solitary mammal: evidence from brown bears (Journal of mammalogy · 2026Article
- From Rub Tree Prediction to Targeted Genetic Sampling in Brown Bears: Linking Scent-Marking Ecology and Spatial Modelling.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Sex-, age-, and time-specific visual communication in brown bears.Journal of mammalogy · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The rather limited human ability to understand animal vision and visual signalling has frequently clouded our expectations concerning the visual abilities of other animals. But there are multiple reasons to suspect that visual signalling is more widely employed by animals than previously thought. Because visibility of visual marks depends on the background in which they are seen, species spending most of their time living in dark conditions (e.g., in forests and/or having crepuscular and nocturnal habits) may rely on bright signals to enhance visual display. Here, as a result of experimental manipulations, we present, for the first time ever, evidence supporting the use of a new channel of intraspecific communication by a mammal species, i.e., brown bear Ursus arctos adult males relying on visual marks during mating. Bear reactions to our manipulation suggest that visual signalling could represent a widely overlooked mechanism in mammal communication, which may be more broadly employed than was previously thought.
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