Power Cables' UV Flashes Apparently Frighten Animals

Rambo Tribble writes "Ultraviolet light flashes, or "corona", may be scaring animals and altering behavior. An international scientific team, first studying behavioral anomalies in reindeer near power lines, have found that sporadic flashes of UV from the lines are probably responsible. As most mammals can see into the UV spectrum, this has broad implications for the disruption of animal behavior. From the BBC article: "Since, as the researchers added, coronas 'happen on all power lines everywhere,' the avoidance of the flashes could be having a global impact on wildlife.""

Comments

Protection from Deer Car accidents

[Bob the Super Hamste]

After reading the article this may prove to be a solution to the numerous deer car collisions. I might try this given the number of deer in my area.

Re:Protection from Deer Car accidents

[NeverVotedBush]

Here is what the corona discharges look like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Pretty amazing, really.

Is "impact" such a bad thing?

[JoeyRox]

Does everything humans do that affects animal behavior need to be altered or fixed? In this case the "impact" is simply that the animals stay away from the power lines. There are countless naturally-occurring things in nature that have similar kinds of "impact".

Re:Is "impact" such a bad thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

What if those power lines cross a major migration route? Or block a nesting ground or food source? It's nothing personal, but I hate when people just say, "Well it's probably not a big deal." To us it may not seem like it, but to everything else it might be. We are the single most invasive species on the planet. That will eventually come back to haunt us.

Re:Is "impact" such a bad thing?

[JoeyRox]

Fair enough, but animals (like humans) are supremely adaptable. So the question remains - why is it a big deal if animal behavior is altered?

And calling humans an invasive species discounts our role in nature. We have survived through the evolution of our intelligence. The application of that intelligence includes altering nature to the full extent that we're able to in order to support our success as a species. All species do this to the full extent that they're able.

Re:Is "impact" such a bad thing?

[jonnythan]

Because we have power lines everywhere and as far as I know we haven't really spent a lot of time considering the possibility that a simple power line is a de facto boundary to an animal's habitat. It's kind of a big deal when there are serious, important aspects of land use planning and environmental conservation that absolutely rely on accurately predicting and knowing an animal's range and habitat.

Re:Is "impact" such a bad thing?

[dave420]

I appreciate your stance, but this whole "but X is adaptable!" answer to having to change our behaviour to help X is clearly limited. We need to know the scale of the impact before we know if they're adaptable enough to adapt to the changes we are throwing at them. I'm sure you appreciate that if the change we are talking about is simply making them walk 1 meter out of their way - they can probably adapt to that. If the change is causing them to jump off cliffs, there's not much adaptability that would work in that case.

Are you aware that we rely on other species to survive? We evolved with those other species around - removing them from our environment might indeed change the balance of wildlife to the point where things we directly rely on start being affected by our changes to other species. Yes, humans are awesome and clever and can fly and go to the moon and everything, but we still breathe the same air as other (air-breathing) animals, drink the same water, and live on the same planet.

Our role in nature should be to not mess with nature so much that we die out. The status quo got us this far - changing it too much is not a good idea. Science can tell us what constitutes "too much", and ignoring that is folly. Suicidal folly.

Reindeer

[SJHillman]

Well, of course reindeer are especially scared of power lines. They're a hazard for most low-flying objects.

Troll Hunter!

[Max Threshold]

Troll Hunter really was a documentary.

Magnetic fields too

[tomhath]

Many animals can see or detect the Earth's magnetic field. I have to believe those transmission lines and arcing cause some serious anomalies in what they sense.