Human activity is forcing mammals to become more active during the night, research published Thursday in the journal Science has found.
A review of 76 studies of 62 mammal species from six continents found that “human disturbances” — settlement, hunting or even just recreational activity — have increased nighttime activity for these animals by more than one-third. While the effects of human activity on animal habitat is well documented, until now very little was known about how humans impact the hours that animals keep.
Lead author Kaitlyn Gaynor, a wildlife ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley, said she and her colleagues embarked on the meta study after observing patterns of increasingly nocturnal animal behaviour in their own field research.
Her co-author, Justin Brashares, for example, had found that antelope
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