56 pages • 1-hour read
Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law
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Chapters 10-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary: “On the Road Again: Jaywalking with the Animals”
Bird strikes can be costly or even deadly, especially with aircraft. Therefore, the NWRC has a branch that works with NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the USDA to study bird-strike mitigation. Small birds generally do not cause much harm unless they are in a big group. Larger birds, like turkey vultures and pelicans, can do significant damage. Starlings, which fly in large formations, are sixth on the list of bird strikes, but it only took one or two Canadian geese to make Captain Sullenberger land his plane in the Hudson River (191). However, white-tailed deer are in more collisions with aircraft than many birds, interfering with planes during takeoff, landing, and taxiing (191). To investigate the reasons for deer collisions, the author tags along with Travis DeVault, a wildlife biologist with NASA’s Plum Brook Station.
DeVault studies the so-called “deer in the headlights” phenomenon, where deer see an oncoming object and freeze instead of getting out of the way, especially when the object is as large as an aircraft. Birds and mammals maintain a “spatial margin of safety” (193), an assessment of how far away a predator is and how fast it’s moving, giving them a “flight initiation distance” (FID), the closest point at which they can safely flee. If they have found a good source of food, animals will wait until the very last moment. That makes roadkill especially dangerous, as it draws scavengers to the road or, in the case of NASA, the launch pad. Being able to judge how an object seems to grow in size as it approaches, called “looming,” is an important part of an animal’s survival (194). However, animals cannot make sense of the high speeds of human-made vehicles, as no natural predators move that quickly. If it’s night, the deer don’t associate headlights with large, looming objects. Even humans do not develop a decent ability to estimate high speeds until adulthood (195). For animals, their other natural instincts for staying safe from moving objects may render them more susceptible to being struck by a vehicle. Deer stay still to blend into trees and avoid detection. Turtles stop and pull their heads and limbs into their shell. These things get them killed on roadways (196).
Our human instinct to avoid hitting animals while driving may also have deadly consequences if that instinct leads to swerving and hitting a second object, like a tree or another motorist (196). Taller animals, like moose and camels, are more likely to be in deadlier crashes because their weight comes down on the windshield or roof of a car, something that some car manufacturers calculate into their crash avoidance systems. Autonomous vehicles are unlikely to swerve for small animals, but it is unknown what they would do when confronted with a deer, as there have been cases of self-driving cars hitting people without braking.
Signs warning of potential deer crossings have not been shown to reduce driver speeds. Signs with flashing lights or accompanied by dead deer or realistic deer mounts, however, have reduced speeds. Drivers can habituate to warnings without signals of danger, though, so the best warnings are solar-powered lights that only flash when deer-sized animals trigger the sensors (201). Efforts in Yellowstone National Park and the Mojave National Preserve to caution drivers about animal crossings have been ineffective, especially as the danger is mostly to the animals (201). The only truly effective measures are “wildlife-specific overpasses” (202), but they are very expensive and cannot cover every area where they are needed. DeVault and his team are experimenting with rear-facing lights on cars that light up the grill, giving deer a better visual on the large object moving toward them. So far, though the FID isn’t much improved, the results are promising in reducing the deer’s immobility (204). Using ultraviolet light, the range in which deer see best, makes the color white stand out, but orange and red do not show up; thus, orange hunting gear makes hunters safer from one another while camouflaging them to deer (205).
Chapter 11 Summary: “To Scare a Thief: The Esoteric Art of the Frightening Device”
Also at Plum Brook Station, the author meets Tom Seamans, who is in charge of finding frightening devices to scare away birds. For example, starlings like to nest in cavities, but near an airstrip, they may move into jet engines. The trick, he says, is in keeping them away because, like people, birds habituate to the thing that scares them if it doesn’t eventually develop into the threatened danger. Recorded distress cries, for example, often bring in more birds rather than scare them away. Dead birds, however, can be effective deterrents, as a study found with a vulture carcass on a communications tower (211). Effigies using real feathers can be effective, too, though, in the case of vultures vandalizing cars at Everglades National Park, the rangers spent so much time explaining the effigies to disturbed visitors that they removed them and suggested motorists protect their cars with tarps instead (213). It is not clear to researchers why vultures tear at rubber and caulking on cars, but some speculate that the strength required is similar to that needed to pull apart carcasses (214).
One noteworthy instance of using effigies was at the Twin Towers recovery site after 9/11. Seamans was part of the Wildlife Services team, tasked with keeping birds away from the site, which contained a lot of human remains. They used pyrotechnics, and after the birds habituated, they moved on to shooting the birds. The 23 gulls killed were then used as effigies in areas where the birds congregated, though they were ineffective at the recovery site because the motivation to get food there was too high (216).
A new option is drone-based bird frightening devices. A company called RoBird builds drones that resemble falcons, a bird of prey that can scare large herring gulls. Landfills are prime feeding grounds for gulls, so the RoBird is tested there. The service provided by RoBird comes with an operator who trained with a falconer to mimic the flight patterns of falcons (219). Some companies, though, just hire a real falcon and falconer to clear out problem birds. The author notices a difference in the gulls’ response to pyrotechnics versus the RoBird, which induces a similar reaction to how they respond to a real predator (219).
Chapter 12 Summary: “The Gulls of St. Peter’s: The Vatican Tries a Laser”
When Dutch florist Paul Deckers arrived at St. Peter’s Basilica the morning of the pope’s Easter Mass in 2017, he saw that the daffodils and roses he had carefully arranged were strewn about on the floor. Gulls were the culprits. However, even gull experts are uncertain about the motives—whether the gulls were looking for worms or performing a territorial display akin to “displaced aggression” (225). This aggression is sometimes seen when gulls kill another’s chick, which they sometimes eat. However, just as with bears and humans, a small percentage of the gulls do the majority of the cannibalism (225). Gulls are generalists with a wide-ranging diet, and some hunt other birds. One such gull killed a dove that the pope released at an event for Catholic youth in 2014 (226). Gull researchers point out that on the other hand, gulls often raise orphaned chicks, and the males rear the young more than in most other bird species (226).
The newest technique to deter gulls from the flower displays at St. Peter’s is an array of lasers. Given the urban location and large crowds expected for the Easter Mass, some of the other techniques were non-starters such as explosions, smelly smoke, and effigies of dead gulls (229). Green lasers have been used at night to keep away a variety of birds, and they stay away for a week on average (229). André Frijters is the man in charge of the lasers for the Vatican event. Formerly a farmer, he used frightening devices to keep birds away from his lettuce before deciding to change careers (231). Lasers are not without danger, however. They may blind or injure the eyesight of people who look directly into them, though the effects on birds’ vision are unknown (235).
People have been trying to scare birds away from crops for centuries, and the most effective approach has been to have humans scare them away. Some small farms still employ people to do that today (232). However, it is impractical for a large-scale operation.
The flowers at St. Peter’s survive the event without trouble from the gulls.
Chapters 10-12 Analysis
Unlike earlier chapters, the animals in these chapters are more likely to be harmed or killed by humans than to kill or injure humans. The author interviews researchers to understand why animals behave the way they do and explores the technology used over decades to eradicate the problem.
Deer can be a hazard for motorists and, surprisingly, pilots. The advent of fast-moving vehicles is too recent for animals to have evolved the ability to make sense of their size and speed. Their basic survival instincts kick in, which means they may remain still to avoid detection, literally becoming the “deer in the headlights.” Gadgets such as deer whistles on cars do not work, but there is some promise in rear-facing lights that illuminate a car’s grill, which gives deer a better view of a moving car than headlights alone. As with situations explored in earlier chapters, one of the main components in deer collisions is human behavior. Research shows that even with animal-crossing warning signs, drivers do not slow down. There is more of a reduction if the signs flash or if there is an actual carcass nearby, but such things are only effective if they are intermittent. Just like other animals, humans habituate to warnings over time if an actual danger doesn’t manifest. “For long-lasting fear,” the author writes, most people and animals, “need to see or hear some consequences” (211). These details add an additional layer to the book’s discussion of Mitigation Efforts in the Human-Animal Conflict.
Habituation is also an issue with bird pests. Most frightening devices only scatter birds for a short time, but then “they get used to the sound or sight that once alarmed them. They start to call your bluff,” and they return (210). For example, pyrotechnics ward off birds, but the blasts cause “more of a startle reaction than the kind of lasting low-grade, let’s-get-out-of-here nerves brought on by the presence of a predator (or a convincing robotic imitation)” (219). Effigies with real feathers, or actual dead birds hanging up, prove to be better “scarecrows” than actual scarecrows, which birds come to associate with food. With effigies, some experts theorize that birds sense something bad happened to one of their flock and stay clear of the area. However, effigies are best used in areas without many visitors, unlike St. Peter’s in Rome or a national park, because they are not pleasant to look at and may disturb people. Robot drones that mimic falcon flight or lasers are high-tech solutions, but they are costly. The lowest-tech solution, having people scare the birds away, has worked for centuries, but it is labor-intensive for large farms. As noted above, Roach uses humorous language to describe bird behavior in this section. This language heightens the irony in the situation: Birds adapt to warning signs just like humans, so mitigating their behavior shows the same difficulties as modifying human behavior.
As the book progresses, the author continues to notice how the human-animal conflict is rarely about an animal going rogue or purposely causing harm to people. Most often, it’s animal instinct conflicting with human behavior. She states in one of the chapters on birds, “It’s about keeping fed, protecting one’s progeny, escorting the genes to the next generation. It’s gulls being gulls and, unfortunately in some cases, trying to do it too close to people being people” (228). In a sense, humans share these urges and instincts, though some researchers warn against anthropomorphizing animal behavior. Doing so can obscure a true understanding of why they do what they do.
The author ends with a musing on Pope Francis, named after St. Francis of Assisi, a protector of animals: “Might the current papacy espouse more progressive approaches to nuisance wildlife?” (236). Witnessing all the costly efforts to eradicate problem animals or the problems they cause, she now turns her attention toward balancing the need to address animal problems with respect for life.
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