At one point in 2020, 4.4 billion people—more than half of the world’s population—were under lockdown restrictions to stem the spread of COVID-19. This was such a sudden and substantial event that it has become known as the anthropause.
At one point in 2020, 4.4 billion people—more than half of the world’s population—were under lockdown restrictions to stem the spread of COVID-19. This was such a sudden and substantial event that it has become known as the anthropause.
Many bustling cities fell silent, often with restaurants, shops and schools closing, and only essential services allowed to operate. It was around this time when people started to report animals appearing in unusual places. For example, cougars were seen prowling through the suburbs of Santiago, Chile, golden jackals became more active during the day in Tel Aviv, Israel, and dolphins appeared in the normally busy harbor of Trieste, Italy.
Meanwhile, scientists began to wonder whether this tragic event could provide an opportunity to learn how humans impact the behavior of wildlife. A group of animal movement researchers came together in 2020 and formed the COVID-19 Bio-Logging Initiative, which I joined in 2021.
The initiative includes researchers who were already studying animals before the pandemic, and who were using bio-logging devices, such as GPS tags, to record animal movements. These devices—which use technology that you might find in a smartphone or watch—were still recording information while research teams were under lockdown.
We were interested in finding out how animal movements might have changed when human activities were restricted—were the animals really altering their behavior because human mobility had changed, or was it that people had more time to notice animals in these apparently unusual places? The initiative includes several projects tackling this question from different angles, with our first findings now published.
