SCIENCE LAB SCAMPER : DAMN WOLVES

' NO HUFFING AND PUFFING ' : the big bad wolf is afraid of you. Fear of the '' big bad wolf '' a fixture of fairy tales, runs deep in popular culture. 

And just as the animals are recovering from generations of culling that aimed to protect humans and livestock from the highly social and predatory canines, people worry that wolves are becoming less fearful of us.

But how much wolves fear humans has not been tested in any scientific way said Liana Zanette, a predator ecologist at Western University in Ontario.

So she worked with colleagues who designed an experiment described in the journal Current Biology. They did their work in the Tuchola forest of northern Poland, a destination for  tourists and also home to 15 packs of wolves.

Maciej Szewczyk, a biologist at the University of Gdansk in Poland, and his colleagues mounted motion-activated camera-speaker systems in the trees.

Once triggered, cameras began recording, and after a short delay, the animals heard one of three playbacks. Voices of men and women speaking calmly in Polish were the experimental treatment.

This Publishing continues to Part [ 2 ].

The World Students Society thanks Lesley Evans Ogden.