When Op Notices You - Tumblr Posts
Okay am I stupid or are there actually no papers on this?
I'm writing an essay for a neuroendocrinology course and decided my topic to be olfactory detection of predators.
Basically my thinking was "what if prey animals... Just... Smell their enemies coming??? Wouldn't that be extremely advantageous???" And it turns out that there's been a number of studies on rats and mice that prove: Yes, they can smell predators and those odours actually induce a quick fear response in the rats/mice!
Weird? No, not really. Detecting predators from afar is very useful. It's why prey animals often have eyes on both sides of their head: to scan the horizon for predators in almost all directions.
Point is that predator and prey are locked in a co-evolutionary arms race: if prey adapts to predator, predator in turn has to adapt as well. Your prey can detect you from a yards away? Just slap on some camouflage. Your preys ears are like satellite dishes? Just develop specialised feathers that make glide silently through the air. Or, what some predators decided to do, ignore all the beautiful innovations from your prey and just... team up with yo frens and circle your meal...
But if your prey has a keen sense of smell??? What can you do? You could mask your scent some way or another (olfactory camouflage) or leave fewer scent marks on your territory... I guess...
But I've never heard of such a strategy. Nor can I find papers on the matter...
Rats and mice rely on their sense of smell almost more than anything... And they can smell odours from foxes clearly. So then why do foxes still secrete those odours??
TLDR; rat smell fox, fox do not use deodorant, why??
EDIT: ppl keep reblogging this but it's worth it to look in the notes because people have been providing answers to this