Psychological stress in wild animals

Abstract

Wild animals experience various stressors, including predation, social conflict, and environmental changes. Predation risk can cause chronic stress, impacting foraging behavior and increasing vulnerability to starvation. Social animals experience stress from dominance hierarchies, competition, and potential exclusion from their group. Maternal separation and loss of family members also induce stress and grieving behaviors. Human interventions, such as reintroducing predators into ecosystems, can exacerbate these issues. Additionally, unfamiliar sounds and deceptive alarm calls by other animals contribute to psychological stress. While some stress responses are adaptive, many negatively impact animal well-being, increasing the risk of disease and impairing their ability to function. – AI-generated abstract.