Submission + - Warblers Hear Tornadoes Coming from Hundreds of Miles Away
The most likely tip-off was the deep rumble that tornadoes produce, well below what humans can hear. Noise in this "infrasound" range travels thousands of kilometers, and may serve as something of an early warning system for animals that can pick it up. "It's very unlikely that this species is the only group doing this," says Streby. The new study is the first time that migratory birds have been seen taking such dramatic evasive action. "We know that birds can alter their route to avoid things during regular migration. But it hadn't been shown before that they would leave once the migration is over, and they'd established their breeding territory, to escape severe weather." With the predicted increase in severity and frequency of similar storms as anthropogenic climate change progresses, understanding large-scale behavioral responses of animals to such events will be an important objective of future research.