New insight on wild nights
It sounds like a scene straight from “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” — by day, lions lounge under shade trees, but by night, the big cats rule the savannah, relying on a combination of exceptional vision and moonlight to bring down unsuspecting prey. For all its ubiquity, though, it’s a story that may not be as accurate as many people believe. New research suggests that, despite the advantage moonlight would seem to provide hunters, predators such as lions are actually less active on the most moonlit nights, while many prey animals — despite the risk of being eaten — become more active. The study was published this month in the Journal of Animal Ecology. “The results were very counterintuitive,” said Chris Golden ’05, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s Center for the Environment and a co-author on the study. “Most people would believe that predation risk increases on moonlit nights, because predators have an...