Antipredator Behaviour Towards Human in Birds of Southern Rajasthan, India

Abstract

There are many anti-predatory escape strategies in animals. An established method for assessing escape behavior is the flight initiation distance (FID), which is the distance between prey and predator at which an animal flees. The ecological factors affecting avian FID have received much attention over the past few decades, and metaanalysis and comparative analysis have shown that FID is related to body mass and flock size and varies along rural to urban gradients. In our analyses, we determined the relation between FID with two important factor flock size and body mass of birds. Group or herd size can either impact FID negatively (i.e. the dilution effect caused by the presence of many individuals) or positively (i.e. increased alertness as more eyes search for predators).