Behavioral responses of terrestrial mammals to COVID-19 lockdowns

Tucker and a global consortium exploited the COVID-19 lockdowns, the so-called anthropause, as a natural experiment, comparing GPS movement of many terrestrial mammal species during strict lockdowns with the same period a year earlier. They found that reduced human mobility was associated with changes in animal movement: in some contexts animals moved over larger areas and approached roads more closely when human activity fell, while in others, where people shifted into natural areas for recreation, movement was suppressed. The study revealed that mammals respond rapidly and flexibly to changes in human presence, sometimes within days. Including carnivores among its taxa, it demonstrated both the pervasive influence of human activity on movement and the capacity of large-scale tracking networks to detect responses to an unprecedented, sudden global change in human behavior.