I mean they’ve had over one-hundred years of practice. I was on my morning commute a few days ago and driving through an isolated rural area when a fox decided s/he absolutely had to cross the road in front of me at that exact moment despite there most likely being no other moving vehicles for miles around. It slipped on the ice and very nearly went under my wheels but I just about avoided it though must have skimmed its tail as I went past.
I had another fox* cross the road in front of me in the middle of the day during summer this year as well, though that one was more cautious and was looking to its left to make sure nothing was coming, it didn’t however check to the right and jumped in shock when it realised I was there, thankfully I was taking my time so there was no real danger.
Seriously though wouldn’t there be evolutionary pressures to improve their situational awareness or something in this respect? Or am I missing something? Hopefully any other animals that decide to run out in front of me.
*I am of course assuming it was different fox, it would be pretty ironic if it was the same one.
A hundred years is nowhere near enough time for evolutionary change at this scale to occur. If we’re still driving cars in a couple thousand years, and there’s still wildlife around, ask again.
Now, not all behavioral changes are driven by genetic adaptation to instincts, and indeed we do see many animals (especially more intelligent ones) who have adjusted their behavior much more rapidly than natural selection acting on genes alone could allow. For example, a number of corvid species (crows and ravens) have learned to crack nuts or turtle shells by placing the unlucky nut or turtle on a road and letting a car run over them.
I’ll give the same answer I gave then. I watched a documentary about raccoons in Toronto that suggested both that city raccoons were smarter than country raccoons and that city raccoons rarely crossed busy streets. That suggests raccoons’ urban environment was selecting some trait (perhaps intelligence) that helps them survive traffic better. So maybe traffic is contributing to the evolution of smarter raccoons that recognize busy streets and learn to avoid crossing them.
Behaviors can be transmitted genetically (e.g. instinct) or extragenetically (culture). Instincts are the things an animal does without ever having learned or been taut, e.g. a bird building a nest. Culture is the things an animal learns by watching others. Primates and crows are known to exhibit culture. One of the more amazing things some crows have learned is the difference between the driving lanes and the shoulders of a road, and the fact that cars generally don’t drive on the shoulder. If they’re nibbling on some roadkill, they’ll hop away onto the shoulder as you approach and pass by within a couple of feet, then hop back out to their meal after you’re gone.
Most mammals do not even have the visual acuity to perceive a vehicle at long distances and/or the image processing capability to observe a car moving toward them in straight line motion. Most quadrupedal mammals rely on hearing and smell over vision to identify threats and/or food sources, and a motor vehicle moves too quickly to give much warning. Even when it comes to vision, herbivores perceive motion more than identify shape as demonstrated by the fact that you can sneak right up on a deer or rabbit as long as you are downwind, quiet, and stop moving when they look up. And these are not capabilities that are particularly amenable to evolution because they are a complex interplay of sensory capability, cognition, and behavior. The shoulders of roads and highways are a ready source of fresh carrion which attracts scavengers who themselves become roadkill, et cetera, and that has definitely had modification in animal behavior (whether evolutionary or purely sociological) as anyone who has driven down a desert road at night to the sight of many pairs of reflective beacons of the coyotes waiting for a car to hit some unwary jackrabbit.
I would offer a caution about attributing all behavioral modifications strictly to evolutionary ‘instinct’. Mammals and aves are quite capable of both learning and conveying knowledge to their offspring about hunting, scavenging, and threats, even if they do not do it through a grammar or written word. Bears and raccoons in particular have been shown teaching their offspring about particular ways of accessing food sources, including the manipulation of complex mechanisms, and of course corvids have complex ‘play’ rituals that consist of corrective learning about how to forage and conceal food. (Non-human) animals are often much more intelligent than we give them credit for, and frankly immature humans are pretty bad at avoiding cars even moving at slow speeds without a lot of corrective behavior.
Corvids have actually been seen dropping nuts in the tire rut of a lane such that cars do the work of cracking the husk and the bird jumps down and consumes the meat. And of course, ravens are well known bandits capable of opening up unsecured containers and saddlebags to get at food inside.
There’s a related phenomenon when prey animals are already on a road and a car approaches. It’s particularly noticeable on unfenced roads across open moorland grazed by sheep in the U.K. To a human, the logical thing is to run off the road to avoid the car. But the sheep tend to run away from the approaching car along the road. This is adaptive behavior that long predates the existence of roads and cars. When a prey animal is avoiding an approaching predator, it is not a good strategy to run laterally, because the predator will turn diagonally to cut the corner and intercept. The best strategy is to run directly away from the approaching predator, and then only dodge sideways at the last moment if the predator is about to make the catch. That is exactly what the sheep are doing to try to avoid the car - they have no concept of the relevance of the road.
Not intended to be a hijack, but I must comment on opossums playing dead.
They are really, really good at it. One of our dogs catches them very frequently and plays with them at length. My wife is always convinced they are dead. I frequently tell her, “They’re not dead until you’ve given them a chance to recover. Get the dog inside and give the opossum an hour.” At least nine times out of ten, she’ll look outside after an hour and (unbelievably) the animal will be gone.
Back to the topic…many animals have a natural reaction to being startled: they spring straight up. Doesn’t help much with cars on the road.
Back to the marsupial hijack, I watched a possum playing dead for quite a while. (I wanted my trash can back.) He would periodically raise his head to see if I were still there.
It’s not like we’re any better at avoiding large, fast moving metal vehicles. I don’t know why we would expect animals to be any different.
To the extent human beings perform better at the task, it’s certainly not due to any sort of evolutionary pressure. We’re only a handful of generations removed from locomotives and fewer still for automobiles. The way children (and some adults) run head long into traffic should disabuse us of that notion.
I was absent from school when they covered marsupials playing dead, but I was under the impression for a long time that it was a totally involuntary reflex. But I’ve got agree with your observation. They often do seem to be aware of what is going on.
One of my worst experiences was with an opossum that managed to get to the other side of our fence before “dying.” It was literally 18" away from the fence and my dogs were going nuts trying to get it. One of them was chewing on the pickets and trying to force her way through. I didn’t have access to the other yard, so I ended up making a rope noose and attaching it to the end of a broomstick. I looped the animal, got it over the fence, and then carried it to another area outside my fence and out of sight. That animal didn’t twitch a muscle the entire time…but it was gone 20 minutes later.
Interesting, thanks. On the other hand I do live in such an area and generally the sheep avoid the roads entirely, you can quite safely drive past them grazing close to the verge and its extremely unlikely they’ll step out in front of you. Still have to keep an eye on them though, just in case.
And yet my fox could have learned from its near miss, and potentially taught its children to be careful around roads.
You can also have “learning” even when the first mistake kills, though. Let’s say that some deer, for no particular reason, or completely irrational reasons, fear roads, and teach their fawns to likewise fear them, while other deer don’t have this irrational fear. The ones with the fear will avoid roads and survive, and thus be able to teach their fear to their offspring in turn, while the ones that don’t will die, and not be able to teach their brave ways to their offspring. I think that this is the reason why intelligent creatures are subject to developing seemingly-random phobias, to ensure that there are survivors just in case some new, unanticipated threat arises.
I was hiking (illegally, from Zimbabwe) in the mountains in western Mozambique when a crow flew down and stole a roll of toilet paper from our camp site.
There are very few baboons in the area, which is why we left our backpacks unsecured. But also… there are very few large leaved plants, hence the need for carrying toilet paper (and a small trowel)…
This was a ten day hike, and it happened on about day three.
The deer that jumps in front of your car is 1 to maybe, maybe 4 years old. It has had a few years to learn enough to survive for those few years, but this information is not passed on to the next generation. Evolution works poorly when it even works at all, and it takes hundreds of thousands of years. The deer that gets whacked by a car does not learn anything to pass on, the deer that survives dosen’t learn anything either. Evolution is not a linear process.
The deer comes out to the edge of the highway and notices something coming in the distance. It stands there observing this thing, and stands there, and eventually the car gets close enough for the deer to sense movement, and movement means danger, so the deer reacts by leaving and jumps right in front of the car just as you pass.
Why haven’t they learned to read the ‘deer crossing’ signs that are posted? They should have learned by now and be lined up by the sign waiting to cross safely. Hundreds of thousands of years, more like millions and maybe they will get used to cars.