This is scientific American's 60 second science. I'm Christopher Intalyata. Got a minute?

The wilderness protected areas get 8 billion visitors a year, and that's just on land.

Underwater reserves add millions more to the tally, which considering these are protected

areas seems like an insane number of people.

It is insane. Dan Blumstein, a behavioral and conservation biologist at UCLA.

Now, remember, some of these might be local parks, but you know, a lot of people are going and seeking out natural areas annually around the world and

therefore the potential impact of this can be quite large. And the potential impact, to put it bluntly,

you know, does ecotourism make animals dumb?

Or in other words, could our presence disrupt and change the instincts of wild animals

and ultimately affect their survival.

Blumstein and his colleagues surveyed literature on human wildlife interactions

all over the world, from chimpanzee ecotourism in Uganda to elk and antelope gawking in the Grand Teton's.

And they concluded that human tourism, no matter how well intentioned, might desensitize animals,

making them easier prey for poachers and predators.

Now a couple mechanisms could be at play.

There is what's called the human shield effect.

Predators are less likely to pounce when humans are around, making prey less vigilant even after we leave.

Or we might simply habituate prey to large noisy animals, like us, and thus render a more susceptible to predators later.

So yeah, it does seem that we may be inadvertently or

inadvertently domesticating animals through tourism and wildlife tourism and ecotourism.

The review is in the journal, Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

Now, this paper isn't direct proof that tourism is actually desensitizing animals. It's just a theory at this point.

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