Eavesdropping on Prey Alarm Calls to Detect the Presence of Predators

EasyChair Preprint 14349

Abstract

Encounters between humans and large predators result in several human deaths each year, which erodes local support for large predator conservation, despite many large predator species being endangered or critically endangered. We describe how eavesdropping on the communication of different species can help to detect tigers and alert people to their presence. While tigers sometimes produce loud and distinctive roars, they do not produce sufficient vocal events to be tracked acoustically. However, tigers pose a danger to other animals and these animals reliably produce alarm calls in their presence, and forest rangers commonly use these alarm calls to locate tigers in the field. We tested the responses of prey species in the Terai region of Nepal to an artificial tiger model and used automated detection of chital deer (Axis axis) alarm calls to generate a heatmap of tiger presence, which can be used to alert villagers of areas of increased risk of tiger encounters.

Keyphrases: Alarm calls, automatic detection, human-wildlife conflict, interspecific eavesdropping, tigers

@booklet{EasyChair:14349,
  author    = {Angela Dassow and Arik Kershenbaum and Bethany Smith and Andrew Markham and Casey Anderson and Riley McClaughry and Ramjan Chaudhary and Holly Root-Gutteridge},
  title     = {Eavesdropping on Prey Alarm Calls to Detect the Presence of Predators},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 14349},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2024}}