8/8

For more information the article can be found at: www.mdpi.com/2079-7737/13...
Credit to Nautiyal et al., 2024

@damonmatthews.bsky.social

7/8 What are the potential solutions?

-Creating safe corridors
-Working with local communities
-Promoting coexistence through education and alternative livelihoods

The ultimate goal? Reduce conflict, increase tolerance, and protect both the langurs and the livelihoods of the local villagers.

6/8 What’s the cost of this fear-based behavioural shift?

More energy spent on movement and less time spent socializing means potential hits to group cohesion & reproduction. And more time in farm fields leads to more conflict with people.

5/8 Open habitats made things worse.

Without tree cover, langurs were more exposed and had less opportunity to escape. In these areas especially, they increased feeding & movement but socialized even less. All successful dog attacks in the study happened in these open agricultural fields.

4/8 What about humans?

It's the same story.
When people were nearby, langurs also fed and moved more and socialized less.
Why? Because humans often react negatively to crop-foraging langurs (throwing stones, making loud noises, and even using poison).

3/8 What did these researchers find?

In the presence of dogs, langurs:
-Moved more
-Ate more
-Socialized less
These changes are adaptive responses to perceived predation risk in a classic “landscape of fear.”

2/8 In the Mandal Valley of India 🌄 Researchers observed a group of langurs for 3912 hours over 2 years.
These langurs live in a fragmented agro-forest landscape, often foraging on crops near humans and encountering free-ranging dogs, one of their primary predators.