Try telling raccoons that barking dogs don’t bite. The fear of large carnivores, such as dogs, can have knock-on effects throughout an ecosystem.
Predators don’t control populations of their prey just by killing them. They also paint what is termed a landscape of fear, inhibiting prey from feeding and turning parts of their habitat into no-go zones. Now it appears that this has far-reaching effects throughout the food web.
Domestic dogs are the main predators of raccoons on the Gulf Islands of British Columbia, Canada. Justin Suraci and his colleagues at the University of Victoria in Canada wondered what would happen if they stoked the raccoons’ fear of dogs without increasing predation. They set up speakers along the shoreline on two islands and played either the calls of dogs, or of seals and sea lions, which also live here but are not a threat to raccoons........................
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