Name: Noise Pollution Is a Bigger Deal Than You'd Think
Uploaded: 2020-04-04T04:40:50.000Z
Duration: 10 min 3 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of manner

In 2001, shortly after the September 11th attacks in the United States,

something strange happened to a group of whales near eastern Canada:

Specifically, researchers found lower levels of stress-related hormones in their poop,

which is apparently how you measure these things.

And this didn't seem to be a coincidence.

In fact, after more observations, there seemed to be an obvious cause:

Right after 9/11, the waters off the east coast of North America were quiet.

and the whales appeared to let out a collective sigh of relief.

This study was pretty famous when it finally came out in 2012,

Across the world, scientists keep realizing that the noise we make

is affecting even the farthest, most remote corners of the world,

and is impacting everything from owls to dolphins to plants.

But thankfully, by learning what all this sound does,

we can hopefully learn to keep it under control.

Noise pollution is noise created by human activity.

It's mostly associated with transportation,

since vehicles can create a constant hum anywhere humans are doing their thing.

But technically, it can be any human-made noise

that interferes with nature's normal activities,

including outdoor concerts and the hum of air conditioners.

Your A/C unit might not seem like a big deal to you, but in many areas,

the level of noise we make is becoming excessive.

For one, it's disrupting how animals use sound to communicate.

Vocal communication, like chirps, grunts, and songs,

is key between individuals within a species.

And for many, it's the primary way to find a mate.

Like, I don't know if you've been outside in the spring,

but it's kind of hard to not notice the eruption of flirty bird songs that hits

Yes, we get it! You want to mate with somebody!

The problem is, if you want to use sound to communicate,

And for many animals, that's becoming harder.

For instance, one 2016 study on birds played a recording of traffic sounds,

along with the occasional lawn mower or airplane flyover noise.

Then, on top of that, they played a recording of a bird's alarm call.

Normally, birds would chime in and respond to this.

But in the study, the number of responses was 80 percent lower than expected.

And it wasn't just that the birds weren't responding:

They didn't adjust their foraging behavior in these areas, either.

That's kind of significant, because if you can't hear a warning call or don't understand it,

you might be the last to know about a predator, or an oncoming bus.

Meanwhile, another paper published that year

looked at how noise pollution affects hunting.

This team tracked the foraging activities of 78 short-eared and long-eared owls.

And they found that low levels of traffic noise

impacted the birds' ability to detect prey more than 120 meters from roadways.

Like, maybe owls just shouldn't look for dinner at the side of the road.

Except, it turns out, a lot of our land these days is “at the side of the road.”

A 2003 study measured the proportion of land within reach of roadways,

and more than 2000 watersheds across the United States.

It found that 20 percent of the total land area surveyed

So, suddenly, a quiet hunting ground seems a lot harder to come by,

especially if you figure the number of roads has only gone up since 2003.

And when you think of the delicate balance of predator-prey interactions,

it's not like this sound just impacts hungry owls.

Now, you might think that at least some areas are immune to noise pollution.

Like, it couldn't be a problem, say, way out in the open ocean, right?

Even though there isn't as much traffic in the open seas,

The movement of ships creates enormous amounts of sound at low frequencies;

frequencies that travel efficiently through water and cover great distances.

And on top of that constant transportation,

there are more specific sources of noise pollution, too, like resource extraction.

Extracting oil and gas can actually be some

seven orders of magnitude louder than the loudest ship noises.

They're so loud, in fact, that one researcher reported

they can hear extraction happening near Brazil off the coast of Virginia.

So even in areas that might seem peaceful,

there's more than enough sound to be disruptive. And it is!

In 2016, researchers from the University of Maryland

recorded a group of dolphins near coastal shipping lanes.

And they discovered that, when ship activity

elevated the ambient noise in the waters, the dolphins used shorter calls.

Probably so they could actually get their message across.

One marine biologist on the project, Dr. Helen Bailey,

compared the dolphins' situation to someone trying to order in a noisy bar.

“I'll have fries with my burger, please.”

“I said I'll have mine with fries, thanks.”

Although more research needs to be done to understand the impact of all this,

it's possible that these simplified communications could impact social bonding.

And since dolphins are such a social species, that could be significant.

So, from land to sea, noise is changing the way animals behave.

But sometimes, animals just don't want to deal with all this.

Sometimes, instead of adapting to shorter calls or different hunting spots,

they decide to avoid noisy areas entirely.