Have you ever been spooked by a person wearing a Halloween mask or failed to recognize someone with a scarf—because during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, I definitely had! As everyone began wearing masks to protect from the virus, we had to find new ways to identify our friends and family from afar. To compensate for the rise in mask wearing, we had to change our behavior. For instance, you may have relied on the clothes someone tends to wear or the style of their hair to recognize them when wearing a mask. Interestingly enough, humans aren’t the only ones that struggled with this, as many other animal species rely on faces to identify others. One example of such a species is Capra nubiana, or the Nubian ibex.
Nubian ibexes are a species of wild goat that call the Negev Desert Highlands and parts of the Eilat Mountains home. These curve-horned herbivores spend much of their time munching on the local vegetation to fuel up for mountaineering quests and for energy to ward off predators. Ibexes have fantastic time-management skills, and will spend as much time as possible foraging for food. The more time an ibex spends on the lookout for predators, the less time they have to enjoy some delicious grass. This time spent scanning the environment for leopards, wolves, and eagles is called vigilance behavior. Ibexes, especially females as they defend their kids, will engage in more vigilance behavior when something unfamiliar draws near. These mountain dwellers are accustomed to humans, but will they spend more time watching and less time foraging around people wearing masks? Do ibexes rely on faces to recognize humans too? Well Reuven Yosef and colleagues had this same question, as they studied ibex vigilance behavior at an Israeli nature reserve.
This group of researchers hypothesized that humans wearing masks will cause changes in ibex foraging and vigilance behavior. Specifically, the researchers tested (1) how close masked and unmasked humans could get to the ibexes before they would become alerted to their presence (2) and how close masked and unmasked humans could get before the ibexes would run away. What they found was fascinating! Masked and unmasked researchers were noticed by the ibexes at the same distances, but the ibexes would flee at longer distances from masked individuals. This is interesting because despite recognizing the human silhouette, the ibexes showed increased vigilance behavior when approached by humans wearing face masks. So if you ever feel anxious or embarrassed that you didn’t recognize someone wearing a mask, don’t worry because ibexes are in the same boat!
References
Yosef, R., Hershko, M., & Zduniak, P. (2021). Anti Covid-19 face-masks increases vigilance in Nubian ibex (Capra nubiana). Biological Conservation, 263, 109339. doi: 10.1016/j.biocon.2021.109339
