Face masks in action: Birds show reduced fear responses to people wearing face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic in three Asian countries.

ABSTRACT: The 2019 zoonotic pandemic (COVID-19), has led to a massive global lockdown that provides a good opportunity to study how wildlife responds to changes in human activity. Wearing a mask after the COVID-19 outbreak was widely used to prevent the spread of the causative pathogen. It has been shown that tree sparrows (Passer montanus) at two sites in south China exhibit reduced fear responses to people with face masks after a period of heavy exposure to them, whereas European studies showed the opposite, with no changes in the behaviour of the birds towards mask wearers in either rural or urban areas. To further study this, from October 2021 to January 2022, we conducted a flight initiation distance (FID) survey in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Xi'an, China for a variety of field bird speci

SUBMITTER: Yang S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10840011 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature