Noise pollution is fatal to the wildlife
(Mirror Daily, United States) – According to the latest research, noise pollution is fatal to marine life. The study that was released this Friday concludes that there are many fish species that dwell on the reefs and are very sensible to noise pollution such as motor boats. Because of the noisy background, the marine animals are easily getting eaten by predators.
The paper was published in the Nature Communications magazines and it represents extra scientific evidence that noise pollution represent a dangerous, and sometimes fatal, threat to the wildlife.
Even if humans guide themselves more by using their sense of sight it doesn’t necessarily mean that all of the animals around them do the same. There are plenty of species that rely on their hearing when it comes to procuring food or even avoid predators. Noise also prevent some of them from navigating in their environment or selecting a proper mate for reproduction.
Humans make much more noise than they are aware of. We use ships, planes, motor vehicles, sonar probes and we construct big factories, we emit messages on different radio frequencies, we even broadcast different announcements on giant speakers in the cities.
Noise pollution is fatal to marine life, and unfortunately, they are not the single species affected by our racket.
Stephen Simpson, a scientist at the University of Exeter focused his research on a tropical fish called the damselfish. The family of damselfish hosts several hundred species.
These bright blue colored fish usually live their life inside reefs eating, mating and trying to avoid the dusky dottyback, their main predator. And it seems that when they are faced with intense noise, such as that produced by a motorboat, they get very disoriented and end up eaten by the dusky dottyback.
Simpson studied the damselfish erratic behavior both in laboratory and natural conditions. The fish behaved exactly the same in both environments.
The problem with noise pollution is that it doesn’t only affect the small, disoriented colored fish. It is also the main cause of beached whales. The large mammals use infrasound waves to find their peers in the ocean.
Noise pollution distracts them and they end up following the wrong sounds that get them stranded on the beaches. And the cases in which whales survive this expatriation are extremely rare, as rare as the mammals are becoming.
Noise pollution is fatal to marine life, and sadly they are not the only affected ones. Scientists have found that bats and woodpeckers are highly affected by the passing of planes since they use their hearing to find their prey.
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