This is scientific Americans 60 Second Science.

I'm Jason Goldman.

Small carnivores, like foxes or raccoons or badgers,

are themselves prey for larger predators like wolves.

So they spend time hiding instead of hunting.

This influence that big predators have on their ecosystem is called a landscape of fear. But humans are wiping

out most of the world's big predators, which you might assume is good news for the small ones.

But some researchers think that humans exert our own landscape of fear.

Those foxes, raccoons, and badgers just keep on hiding.

Only now they're hiding from us.

In reality, the situation may be far worse.

Humans kill the smaller car. In reality, the situation may be far worse.

Humans kill the smaller carnivores, so things like raccoons and foxes that we have here in North America,

European Badgers that they have in the UK and elsewhere in Europe, and we kill them at a rate that's four times greater than their conventional

large carnivore predators.

Leona Zanette of Western University in London, Ontario.

Because our killing of these smaller carnivores is kind of off the scale.

We're considered the super predator.

To see how humans have altered the landscape of fear,

Zenet and her team traveled to a small forest that's home to lots of European badgers

near Oxford in the UK.

They used hidden speakers to broadcast the sounds of bears and wolves. Two historic predators, both of which are no longer a threat.

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